THE DAWN OF THE CHRISTIAN ART by Jaca Book

ICONS

THOMAS F. MATHEWS

ICONS con contributi di Norman Muller

INDICE Foreword Acknowledgments Introduction The Survival of Ancient Panel Paintings

Traduzione dall’inglese a cura di Context-us, Pavia

Chapter 1 Sites of Discovery: Places of Cult

Redazione dei testi Elisabetta Gioanola/Jaca Book

Chapter 2 Panel Paintings in the Primary Sources

Copertina, grafica e impaginazione Break Point/Jaca Book

Chapter 3 Restructuring Panel Paintings and Hellenizing the Egyptian Pantheon

Selezione delle immagini Walter Bassani, Milano

Chapter 4 Icon Stories and Visions Chapter 5 The Iconography of Mary Chapter 6 The Cult of Templon Icons in Constantinople Chapter 7 Templon and Sanctuary Images in Egypt and the Decree of the Council of Nicaea II Chapter 8 The Festival Set of Icons Appendix: Media Analysis and Pigment Identification References to Works Cited

Stampa e legatura xxxxxxxxxxxxxx agosto 2016

Index Illustrations Credits

ISBN 978-88-16-60511-4

About the Authors Per informazioni: Editoriale Jaca Book – Servizio Lettori via Frua 11, 20146 Milano; tel. 02 48.56.15.20; fax 02 48.19.33.61 libreria@jacabook.it; www.jacabook.it

INTRODUCTION

THE SURVIVAL OF ANCIENT PANEL-PAINTINGS

our project reports the earliest evidence on wood panels. Egg was both easier to use and more permanent. [inventing a wax emulsion called encaustic that had the intensity and glow that we associate now with oil painting.] The medium of panel-painting was the leading edge of artistic creation among the Greeks. Unfortunately none of these Greek works of art survived to modern times. Apelles’ masterpiece was brought to Rome under Augustus and re-dedicated in the Temple of Caesar, because Aphrodite, Venus for the Romans, was regarded as the ultimate parent of the imperial family line, the gens Iulia. The ancient painting, over four centuries old at the time, was said to have needed restoration under Vespasian (7079 AD), but after that it was never mentioned again. When Sandro Boticelli turned to the subject in the 1480’s, he had only Pliny’s story of the original Greek painting to guide his imagination in his Birth of Venus. Panel-painting has been a lost chapter in the history of Ancient art, as far as its material remains are concerned. Wood is a very fragile material, susceptible to damage by moisture, vermin, and fire, as well as by the wear and tear of human use. The mummy portraits of Egypt are the most notable exception, over a thousand of them, saved by their burial; they give eloquent testimony to the accomplishment of Roman portrait painting. But it must be observed that while their burial preserved them, it also denied them any progeny. Made without frames for insertion directly into the mummies, they were not sstrictly speaking panel-paintings but part of the embalmer’s art, and when the practice of mummification was discontinued around 300 AD, the mummy portraits, having all been buried, disappeared without a trace. They were a local Egyptian off-shoot from the main trunk of Graeco-Roman panel-painting, an off-shoot which in the end withered and died. They were not copied and, strangely enough, they were never even mentioned by an ancient author. The main trunk line of panel-painting, however, continued to thrive and grow, and that artistic continuity constitutes the theme of this study. It is our exceptional good fortune that in a project designed to trace the origins of icons, the panel-paintings of the

“No artist has attained glory unless he painted panels,” observed Pliny. In ancient Greece framed wood panels, sometimes referred to as easel paintings, were the artist’s preferred format and they served a wide variety of purposes from modest portraits, treasured as personal keepsakes, to ambitious narratives teaming with animated figures. When Apelles, appointed portraitist of Alexander the Great 332 BC, painted his Aphrodite Rising from the Sea, the religious and erotic content of which excited much discussion in Antiquity, the medium was panel-painting. In a mosaic of ca. 200 AD from a villa near Antioch (Princeton University Art Museum, 1937-264) a young man pines away over a little portrait of his beloved in a panel-painting (Figure Intro. 1). He holds it in his hand and it is hardly more than a hand-span in height. The painting is enclosed in a fitted wooden frame of a type called the eight-point frame because the four framing members extend beyond the corners. In Diocletian’s price edict (AD 301), painters of panels were paid twice the salary of mural painters, making them the best paid craftsmen on the list. In Antiquity, panel-paintings were ubiquitous, called pinakes in Greek or tabellae/tabulae in Latin and a common use was religious. While impressionable young men might fall in love over them, the Greeks would pile them high in temple treasuries or pinakothecae (picture galleries). Prodigious quantities of pinakes were also brought back as spoils by Roman troops returning from foreign campaigns. Wealthy connoisseurs made collections of them and lined them up on shelves in their salons, and the pious left them as votive offerings before country shrines of the gods. According to the ancient historians, it was on panels of wood that the Greek masters of the fifth century BC solved most of the serious expressive problems of painting. Zeuxis was known for his mastery of light and shadow, Agatharchos for perspective and foreshortening, Pauson for realism, Parrhasios for psychological subtlety. Artists experimented with various adhesives, starting in Archaic times with a wax emulsion called encaustic and introducing in Late Antiquity egg tempera, of which 8

A Young Man with a Panel-painting of his Beloved, second century AD. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Art Museum, no. 1937264. Photo. by N. Muller [Muller photo.] A Goddess in Mourning, fourth century BC. London, British Museum, no. 1975.7-28.1 [Museum photo.]

Byzantines, we have been able to assemble a corpus of some sixty pieces from Egypt in the Roman period that constitute a significant sampling of this “lost” genre of ancient art. Besides its contribution to the history of Ancient art, the study of this “corpus” offers a radical new starting point for the study of Christian art. Following Rondot in using the term “corpus” for the set of pieces under study, our set includes five pieces not in Rondot’s study (Septimius Severus and Family; Berlin, 31329; Goddess in Mourining, London, BM 1975.7-28.2; Fortuna Anthousa, Paris, Louvre AF10878-9; Nik , from Dura Europus, New Haven, 1929.288; and Tebtynis excavation site, Fragment 230 from a frame). On the other hand we have omitted one painting of Isis or Hathor, which we judged to be not a panel painting but part of a coffin or some other furniture (Berlin 12712.) Six of the paintings have been lost since discovery, leaving only their photographic record, and many are fragmentary. Though few have precisely fixed dates, the majority seem to cluster from the first through the fourth century AD, but two exceptional panels, with dates around 325 BC and AD 600, stretch the documentation a good deal further (Goddess in Mourning, London, BM 1975.7-28.1 (Figure Intro. 2) and Fortuna Anthousa Paris, Louvre AF 10878-9). For the history of art these panel-paintings have a special interest because of the documented migration of Greek painting to Egypt when Apelles was appointed court painter of Alexander the Great in 331 BC. The conqueror knew the painter personally and the Ptolemaic successors to Alexander introduced numerous other artists from Apelles’ home town of Sicyon, near Corinth, making Alexandria the most lively center of painting in the Ancient world. The enthroned Goddess in Mourning, discovered in Saqqara, belongs to this first blossoming of Greek painting in Egypt. After Apelles, an Egyptian-born painter named Antiphilus did portraits of Ptolemy I and panel-paintings of the gods, including a famous Pan Spying upon a Nymph and he was also renowned for his mastery of genre and still life subjects. One Helena of Alexandria produced ambitious battle scenes, like the famous Battle of Issus. Military heroism became a popular theme in the wake of Alexander’s conquests. Experiments in elaborate trompe-l’oeil architectural compositions also became popular in Alexandria and had a vogue in Rome and around the Mediterranean from Campania in Italy to Petra in Jordan. It is from this rich cosmopolitan tradition of painting that there emerged the Portrait of Septimius Severus and Family (Berlin, 31329) (Figure Intro. 3), a masterpiece of the famous ease and speed of the Alexandrian style. This is the best known of the panel paintings under discussion here and will be examined in Chapter Two. Executed for the visit of the imperial family to Egypt (September 199-April 200 AD), the

Septimius Severus, Julia Domna, and Caracalla (detail), AD 199. Berlin, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Antikensammlung, no. 31329. Photo. by N. Muller [Muller photo.]

painting reached Berlin with no more than a general Egyptian provenance. Papyrus documentation, we will propose, identifies the painting as one of a series of “anathemata,” or thank offerings, that were deposited in the temples of Oxyrhynchus and presumably in other temples of Egypt as well. This is critical evidence of the popularity in Egypt of the Greek religious custom of what are called “votive” of-

ferings, which seems to have inspired many of the Egyptian paintings under study here. Moreover the Septimius Severus presents the emperor in a “syncretism” with the god Serapis. “Syncretism,” we will see, is an important religious dynamic behind the paintings under discussion. Gods and goddesses are the exclusive subjects of the corpus of panel-paintings from Roman Egypt. Many of the gods carry weapons, but battle scenes are not represented, nor are the epic deeds of the gods. In only a single painting do we find a hint of a story line, and that coincidentally is a painting of Aphrodite. In the painting The Love of Ares and Aphrodite (Moscow 5786), (Figure, Intro. 4.) the goddess throws her cloak over the shoulders of her divine lover, drawing him to

her naked breast (see below p. XXX). A passage in Clement of Alexabdria refers specifically to such a painting in an Alexandrian bedroom. Otherwise in the corpus of paintings the divinities are presented in unvaryingly static poses on a shallow stage devoid of story references. The sixty paintings assembled here document the gods at a unique point in their evolution drawn from three distinct pantheons: the native ancient Egyptian pantheon of the Nile Valley, the Graeco-Roman pantheon of the larger Hellenistic world, and a pantheon of divine military protectors from the Syro-Arabian caravan routes—a new pantheon defined for the first time by Vincent Rondot. This results in a new picture of the divine world on the brink 11

The Love of Ares and Aphrodite, second century AD. Moscow, State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, no. I, 1a 5786 [Museum photo.]

of its reception of still a further “pantheon,” if one may stretch the term, namely Christ and His Mother with His angelic and saintly companions, who infiltrated and eventually replaced the pantheons of ancient gods. This terminology, of course, must be understood analogously, because Christianity insisted on a monotheistic faith, in which there could be only one God, one theos, The profession, “I believe in one God,” “Pisteuo eis enan Theon,” was the starting point of Christian belief and the rallying call of the martyrs during the era of the persecutions. While the polytheists could use the term theos for a whole gamut of supernaturals, Christian theologians defined very carefully the status of the angels and saints, who were associated with God’s work on earth, in such a way as to safeguard the monarchy of God the Father. They were not “gods” but “God’s friends” or collaborators. Nevertheless, the term “pantheon(s)” becomes useful in discussing the pluralistic religious world of Late Antiquity.

from the project to publish his own study omitting five of the pieces studied here and restricting his discussion to the pagan Egyptological dimensions of the subject. We will rely heavily on his research on Egyptian iconography, but our intention is rather to situate this “corpus” in the long evolution of panel-painting and especially in the startling development of Christian icons. To this end we will also introduce a range of textual sources that have gone un-noticed or un-explored, whether pagan or Christian, starting with the inscriptions on the panel-paintings themselves, which reveal their use in the ancient Greek practice known as “votive” offerings. In other words both the technology of the paintings and the religious practice underlying their use were imported from the Hellenistic world. Texts attesting Christian use of icons already in the first and second century have gone mostly unnoticed, and they are promptly followed by a whole body of neglected Christian icon literature. This includes prayers recited before icons, stories about icons, even stories of visions of icons (respecting always the limitations of the historical genre), as well as texts of the Divine Liturgy (in which icons figured from very early times). Indeed one must look at the whole habitus of the religious practice of Orthodoxy, in which icons played an integral role second only to the Sacrament of the altar itself, with important bearings on the theology of Orthodoxy to which icons have made essential contributions not only in the epistemology of images but in the discussions of the Incarnation and Redemption. The challenge to modern scholars is to find ways to understand and sympathize with Orthodox practice, from their secular orientation.

The term “icon” we use in its technical art historical sense, common in European languages since the nineteenth century, referring specifically to panel paintings intended for Christian cult, as that cult is understood in the religious traditions of the Eastern Churches. This usage of “icon” is obviously modern, for in ancient papyrus sources the same Greek terms eik n and its diminutive eikonidion (“image, picture” and “little picture”) are used for both the pagan and Christian panelpaintings. However, since in current usage the term “icon” carries unavoidable Christian associations we will refrain from calling the pagan paintings “icons,” to avoid confusion. We will generally refer to them simply as Graeco-Roman or Egyptian cultic panel-paintings, even as we try to specify their possible connections with the Christian icons. Christian icon painting, in our view, stands squarely in the tradition of ancient art and constitutes one of the most inventive phases of Greek panel-painting. Since our study is primarily concerned with the precedents of Christian icons, we have no effort to be complete in our citations of Byzantine and Coptic panel paintings. The placement of the light source in haloes within the picture frame, the extension of the picture painting onto folding wings in the new triptych format, the creation of a multi-register hierarchical format for organizing complex material, the whole shift of purpose from Classical mim sis or “imitation”of nature to the reproduction of a vision of another world--all of these are extraordinary inventions destined to permanently re-shape the history of art. In this study the archaeological material is a “corpus” of paintings whose study was initially undertaken by the authors under a generous grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation (1998-99) and expanded with the addition of Egyptologist colleague Vincent Rondot under a grant from the J. Paul Getty Foundation (2000-02). Rondot subsequently separated 12

The Historiography of the Corpus For a fifth of the pieces in our corpus reliable provenance data is available, which we will examine at the outset in Chapter One; and while such data is missing for the remainder, a great deal is known about their larger context from the archaeological and literary sources of the Fayum, including inscriptions and papyri. When the Fayum was developed by the Ptolemies with a network of canals it became the most fertile agricultural province of Egypt. To manage this irrigated farmland the Ptolemies brought in workers from all over Egypt, but the ownership of the land they assigned to settlers classed loosely as “Greek,” who were mainly military personnel being recompensed for service. This complex ethnicity we will find reflected in the paintings themselves. As a field of study, the corpus of panel-paintings from Roman Egypt have constituted a curious “no man’s land,” that neither Egyptologists nor Byzantinists have wanted to enter. Bibliography on the corpus has been exhaustively collected by Rondot and in sum it is very disappointing, his book being the sole serious discussion of the subject. Many of the panels were found fully a century ago in the chance explorations of tre13

asure hunters and made their way circuitously into museum collections, losing in the process all clues of archaeological information. Others, excavated more professionally, were reburied, so to speak, in museum basements without the least scholarly notice, at times without even catalogue entries. In one extraordinary instance, a collection of 17 fragments from Tebtynis were judged by their discoverer, Carlo Anti in the 1930s, to be too insignificant to warrant even preserving and were unceremoniously discarded in the radim or dump of the excavation. Re-excavated in 1995, they have been included in our study. (Figure, Intro. 4) Excavations currently in progress continue to add very occasional new pieces, such as the Isis panel found in the Western Desert in Ismant el-Kharab (Kellis) in 1994. In the academic segregation of disciplines, Egyptologists have regarded the material as Hellenistic, rather than Egyptian, and too late to excite much interest. Indeed it is true, as Muller’s research explains, that the technology of painting on wood panels is thoroughly Greek. Thus one has a corpus of material whose provenance is Egyptian, whose technology is Greek, and whose iconography is a mixed new invention, on which Byzantine art would build a new pantheon. For Byzantinists, on the other hand, the material was too early and too pagan. The pattern was established by André Grabar and Ernst Kitzinger whose enormously influential studies of icons simply bypassed the material, although eighteen of the panels had already been published in prominent journals. Similarly, in the publications of the Sinai corpus of icons by the Soteriou’s (1956-58) and Weitzmann (1967) the Christian paintings are presented as if their Egyptian predecessors never existed. Even as late as 1994 Hans Belting still omitted mention of the material in a study of icon history that explicitly focused on the cult or veneration of icons. The general neglect of the material on both sides has resulted in misunderstandings. A confusion of the panels with mummy portraits has been common and even serious researchers of single pieces have often remained unaware of related pieces. In 1988, when Maggie Rassart-Deberg turned to the panels in a courageous effort to find Egyptian origins for Coptic icons, she was able to cite only a half dozen of the paintings. In a pair of studies that represent tentative sketches of the present project, I assembled a list of 22 of the panels (in 1999) then of 30 (in 2001), in which I pointed out their parallels to early Byzantine icons in construction, composition, and iconography. I proposed that both the pagan Egyptian panels and the early Byzantine icons stemmed from the same ancient religious practice of making “votive” or thank offerings to the divinity by depositing an image of the god in a sacred place. Klaus Parlasca, the senior scholar responsible for the corpus of mummy portraits, has enlarged our list of “votives.” While our early collaborator Rondot chose to restrict himself to the

study of the polytheistic Egyptian theology of the panels, the present study becomes the first to try to situate the corpus in the larger sweep of the history of painting. It must be noticed that none of the paintings in our corpus here appeared in David Frankfurter’s penetrating study of religion in Roman Egypt, or in Laszlo Török’s wide-ranging survey of the art of Late Antiquity in Egypt, which discussed painting, sculpture, tapestries, and even minor arts. Our panel-paintings unveil fresh and unstudied evidence of a most creative phase in the history of art. The Dawn of Christian Icons The construction of Mary’s cult is an essential part of the icon narrative, Mary with her Child being far and away the most popular subject in the whole course of Christian art (Chapter Five).(Figure, Intro. 5) The two-track scholarship on Mary’s veneration and her icons has been put on an entirely new footing in the twenty-first century by the extraordinary exhibition and accompanying catalogue of the Mother of God at the Benaki Museum in Athens in 2000, under the direction and editorship of Maria Vassilaki. The task was described in bold lines in the opening essay by Averil Cameron “The Early Cult of the Virgin.” According to Cameron, the cult of Mary had a relatively a late start after the acceptance of the term theotokos or “Mother of God” by the ecclesiastics gathered at the Council of Ephesus in 431 and there is a gap in evidence before the “proliferation of images of the Virgin and Child from the sixth century onwards” Cameron places the great impetus for the theological interest in Mary in the monastic movement of the fourth century and its promotion of asceticism. By assuming a late start for the icon of Mary Cameron puts aside the question of its relationship to the pagan antecedents that concern us in this study. In Cameron’s outline of the story, the flowering of liturgical and poetic expressions of Marian devotion accompanied the expansion of art in the sixth century following the special prominence given to the relic of Mary’s veil at the shrine of the Blachernai. Constantinople appealed to Mary for protection against invaders. The strategic importance of the Blachernai northern corner of the city gave the miraculous success of the relic and icon a critical role in the defense of Constantinople against repeated assaults in the seventh and eighth centuries Mary’s role as city protectress a prominent part of Byzantine piety thereafter, which is the principal theme of Bissera Pencheva: Mary in Byzantium “embodied power rather than maternal tenderness.” This represents a major shift in Marian studies, moving attention from the arena of iconographic analysis to the political arena of the imperial ideology of Byzantine rulership. It should be underlined that the icon of the Hod g tria, which was found to be the most effective in the military 14

defense of the city when carried in procession was an early type of Mary affectionately embracing the Child, without the least trace of military insignia. The virgin goddess Athena, responsible for the defense of Athens against an earlier generation of invaders, was equipped with a whole panoply of weapons--a plumed helmet, a shield, a military vest or aegis, a sharp pointed spear--none of which ever enter Mary’s icons. The evolution of the iconography of Mary has traditionally been framed by the study of the “types of the Virgin Mary,” an approach pursued very elegantly in a series of entries under this term in the ODB by Nancy P. Šev enko, who distinguished very carefully between the iconographic types and the terminology applied to the types. Summarizing the grand puzzle of the material, Šev enko concluded: “Though the various iconographic types of the Virgin can be quite easily grouped and distinguished one from another, we find considerable discrepancy between the type depicted and the Byzantine names attached to it: even identical images may be accompanied by quite different epithets or designations. This is because the designations are not in fact iconographic in character. They are either names of sanctuaries or poetic epithets that aim at conveying some important quality in the Virgin.” The omission of the earlier evidence of Marian cult in the Gospels and Proevangelium, seriously impoverishes the narrative of The Mother of God. Twenty years ago, when Paul Corby Finney wrestled with the problem of the first Christian art he chose not icons but mural paintings. In his penetrating study he sought to explain the seemingly abrupt appearance in the mid third century of Christian mural paintings in the church of Dura Europus in Syria and in the Callistus Catacomb in Rome, in the face of what was commonly interpreted as an anti-image stance in the writings of the early Christian Apologists. Finney demonstrated that the aim of the Apologists was to explain to an unsympathetic pagan audience the unwillingness of Christians to take part in their traditional Roman rites and ceremonies. The Apologists wanted to represent Christians as a kind of stoic sect whose worship of a spiritual God transcended material props. When Clement of Alexandria (ca. 160-215), firmly opposed images of the pagan gods, it was not from an aversion to images but from an aversion to paganism, for he also composed a list of neutral images acceptable for Christian use, such as the Good Shepherd, the Fisherman, or the anchor. When eventually in the mid-third century Christians became property owners of sufficient wealth to afford art, Finney proposed, they began constructing their own iconography by a process of selection of acceptable images like those recommended by Clement and adapting them to carry a Christian message. While Finney’s “selectivity” mechanism may explain a great deal of the catacomb murals, literary sources attest the existence of Christian art century

earlier than Finney proposed and they locate it not in murals but in panel-paintings. Three neglected passages refer to the use of panel paintings, or icons, among Christians (Chapter Four). In the Acts of John from Asia Minor (probably Smyrna, 125-50 AD) an icon of St John is described and its meaning is discussed theologically at some length, as we will see. It was Irenaeus, originally also from Smyrna (ca. 115- ca. 202), who first described Christian uses of icons. Twice in his treatise Against Heretics, he tells of icon use, first in Rome during the papacy of Anicetus, AD 154-66, and again in the observances of Simonian Christians of un-defined location before the end of the century. The icons to which he refers are clearly cultic, that is, they are used in the religious services of the community. In addition he describes them not as the result of Finney’s process of selectivity, but as the result of a process of “syncretism,” that is, a re-fashioning of the traditional ancient images of the pagan gods to suit a new purpose. The early history of icons developed in this study will take a radically different shape from that which we have inherited from traditional art history. The possibility of this kind of pagan-Christian continuity was raised by the very pioneer archaeologist to publish on the subject in 1906, Otto Rubensohn, and it has re-appeared from time to time in the literature. The problem is the link. One must find the connections in the paintings themselves and in evolution of their use from pagan to Christian. That the ultimate origins of European panel painting were to be found in Egypt seemed to be indicated half a century ago by the discovery of the early icons of St. Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai. Remoteness from civilization had shielded the monastery’s artistic treasures from the conflicts that despoiled the other ancient Christian centers while the desert climate of Sinai provided ideal storage conditions. When Georgios and Maria Soteriou (1956-58), followed by Kurt Weitzmann (1967), first published these Christian panel-paintings they seemed to push back the origins of European panel-paintings to the time of Justinian’s founding of the monastery in AD 548. Justinian’s date was then taken as the date of the invention of icons, but as we have observed literary sources mention them in the second century. Though at first the Sinai paintings interested only Byzantinists, major exhibitions of Sinai icons in recent years, both in Europe and the United States, have gradually introduced the works to a wider public and their place at the head of the whole broad tradition of devotional images in European art is now widely acknowledged. The exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Benaki Museum in Athens, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and most recently at the Royal Academy of Art in London have established some of the lines of connections between the Sinai icons and the 15

The Enthroned Mother of God, AD 548. Sinai, St. Catherine’s Monastery, icon no. B2. [Source: Andaloro, Viaggio, #20]

fashion before the late seventh century.” The paintings that Weitzmann and others have been in the habit of identifying as “icons” Brubaker insists on classifying as simply instructional or commemorative “portraits,” reversing history to make icon veneration into the result rather than the cause of Iconoclasm. The term “portraits” thus becomes a way of secularizing icons. By virtue of their sacred subject matter, however, the paintings in our ancient corpus, like the Byzantine icons that follow them, constitute a special genre. (Figure, Intro, 6 Mary Enthroned Sinae, St. Catherine’s Monastery, icon B2, AD 548) We are dealing with non-narrative compositions of frontally posed figures, distinguished as divine by their attributes (haloes, crowns, dress, scepters, weapons, animal mascots). Although ancient portraiture could carry religious dimensions, in the mentality of the ancients, the divinities were of a different and superior class from mere mortals. The class of ordinary mankind, on the other hand, is abundantly documented in Roman Egypt by the mummy portraits (over a thousand surviving, catalogued by Parlasca), and it is clear that both technically and stylistically these human portraits constituted a different genre from our divine paintings. Technically they are very different, as Muller’s analyses will show, both in the framing and in the medium--encaustic common in the mummy portraits but never in the corpus of gods which prefer egg tempera. The look of the figures too is entirely different. The humans in the mummy portraits are clearly part of our quotidian world, their faces are full of the irregularities and particularities of our terrestrial company. They are illuminated with the prosaic light of our ambience, with reflections sparkling in their eyes. The faces of the gods, on the other hand, are generalized with a kind of statuesque grandeur; they radiate their own light from the haloes that encircle their heads, and their eyes usually lack the glinting reflections of our mundane world. Dress and attributes also distinguish mortals from gods and the women are pre-occupied with the fashions of the day in dress and coiffure. In the ancient world painters clearly understood that they were working in a different genre when they were asked to undertake a painting of a god or goddess. The real connection between the mummy portraits and the panels we are studying is rather in patronage. Mummification was a very expensive process and mummy portraits therefore represent the elite ruling class. These were precisely the people who commissioned the paintings of the gods in our corpus for their private cultic uses. They owned and inhabited the Fayum homes which they furnished with the panel-paintings of their gods (though both painting traditions were broader than the Fayum province).

main trunk line of Byzantine and Medieval panel-painting. The corpus of early Christian icons constitutes a kind of echo or mirror of the corpus of pagan panel-paintings of Roman Egypt, sharing many of the same conventions. As we will see, in measurements the panels are very similar, and the conventions of iconography are remarkably close. In numbers the two bodies of material happen to be very comparable. Surviving early Christian icons number about seventy, compared to the sixty pagan panels under study here. St Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai has the exceptionally largest collection. Weitzmann counted some thirty-six Sinai panels in the pre-Iconoclast category, that is before Leo III’s edict against icons in AD 730, including four originally from Sinai that are now in Kiev. Another thirty or so early Christian icons can be counted from the rest of Egypt, whether now in European collections or still in Egypt. Meanwhile Rome has another six, all of the Mother of God. The Christian material tends to be in much better condition physically than the pagan, having survived in church collections rather than in the desert sand. Weitzmann’s fundamental study of the Sinai icons supplies a chronological framework for their study based on stylistic analysis and this must be accepted until a better tool has been developed. Further, he attempted a sorting of the paintings into separate schools, like Bernard Berenson’s sorting of the Italian schools of painting—Constantinopolitan, SyroPalestinian, and Egyptian. Weitzmann’s inference that the icons were not painted at the monastery but brought there by pilgrims important, and I have argued that they were left at Sinai expressly as “offerings,” to which we will return. A deep discomfort with the cultic dimensions of icons underlies much of the current literature as if icon veneration were some gross pagan rite like blood baths or infanticide. The problem that Finney encountered in the modern interpretation of the Apologists, also underlies the whole field of icon study. Finney cites Cyril Mango’s weighing of the documentary evidence as typical of the scholarship on icon cult: “The Iconoclasts were closer to historical truth than their opponents in affirming that the early Christians had been opposed to figurative arts.” Mango’s assessment, Finney remarks, “represents a kind of modern critical consensus.” Then Mango, as if to bend the evidence to fit his expectations, includes among his “documents” the horos or decree of the Iconoclast Councils of 754 and 815 while he simply skips the horos of the Orthodox Council of 787. Bolder in expressing her position, Leslie Brubaker, director of the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman, and Modern Greek Studies, the University of Birmingham, has nailed her thesis to the door: “There is little evidence for a ‘cult of sacred images’ in pre-iconoclast Byzantium. The textual and material evidence agrees that sacred portraits existed, but there is little indication that these images received special veneration in any consistent

The Cultic Sites of the Panel- Paintings My initial proposal that one should imagine a smooth continuity in cultic forms and uses between the ancient polytheist 16

The Enthroned Mother of God, (detail), AD 548. Sinai, St. Catherine’s Monastery, icon no. B2. [Source: Andaloro, Viaggio, #20]

Enthroned Isis, Tebtunis fragment 212, second century AD. Photo. by N. Muller [Muller photo.]

panels and the Christian icons has been firmly resisted (with the notable exception of historian Judith Herrin). Siri Sande, in an express rejoinder to my article of 2001, introduced a number of Romano-Campanian murals in which wooden panel-paintings are represented at rustic shrines, and this adds an important new dimension to the history of this genre of painting. However, in spite of the religious subject matter involved in these paintings and the religious settings portrayed, Sande arrived at the surprising conclusion that these ancient panel-paintings were merely decorative in intention. This is an argument we will address in Chapter Two. The non-narrative character of the corpus paintings of the gods is noteworthy. Narrative religious paintings comprised a different genre of ancient art, commemorating the heroic and erotic exploits of the gods. Only a single panel in our corpus alludes to such a theme, namely the Love of Ares and Aphrodite (Moscow 4233/I Ia 5786). Ambitious panel-paintings of the stories of the gods are eloquently described by Pliny and Pausanias and their active, crowded compositions are attested in surviving works in other media--Greek vase paintings, Pompeian wall paintings, and floor mosaics. Arranged like actions on a stage, complete with background scenery, the narratives were full of gesture and motion in contrast with the overwhelmingly static and frontal compositions of our panels. As in Christian icons, the figures in the Egyptian panels confront us motionless and timeless. With no more than a ledge to stand on, or a throne for sitting, their activity is restricted to grasping some symbol of their status while they gaze at or over the heads of the onlookers. They tell no story. They have another purpose; they are cultic. This issue was raised in the very first scholarly attention to the material by archaeologist Otto Rubensohn. On assignment from the Berliner Königlichen Museen he was excavating a series of houses in Theadelphia and Tebtynis in 1902 in search for papyri when he came upon two panel paintings of the gods of great significance [Berlin 15978 and Berlin 15979]. Puzzled by their domestic use he remarked on their resemblance to cultic paintings, whether in Roman lararia, or in Byzantine and medieval use. Without investigating these very diverse cultic possibilities Rubensohn settled for a purely “decorative” intention in the paintings. But the issue reappeared regularly in subsequent scholarship in which the term “icon” was invoked fairly often. The cultic dimension places these paintings in a category called devotional, which brings us to the most controversial aspect of our study. In the study of religion one distinguishes three large areas of human behavior regarding the divinity. First, there is creed or theology, which describes the narrative content of a religion, the story line of the gods’ behavior toward men, formulated in sacred books or in the teachings of the elders. Secondly, there is ethical code governing the

social behavior of the devout including a wide range of customs, obligations, and prohibitions regulating sexuality, diet, and dress. Thirdly, there is worship, veneration or cult, that is the rites, prayers, and gestures by which people believe they enter into contact with the divine. These rites can be structured observances of the community, which is referred to as liturgy or divine service, or they can be private devotional practices of individual initiative. Although in modern times many Christian denominations have reduced worship to a matter of words, that is readings, sermons, and songs, in earlier centuries Christian cult also had a visible, tangible, physical component. For example the rite of initiation, that is Baptism, consisted not just in reciting a profession of one’s faith but in being stripped naked, being immersed in a bath, being anointed with oil, and then being re-clothed in fresh garments, while carrying candles (it was a nocturnal rite) and singing. Similarly, the rite of the Eucharist, which we will consider in greater detail in Chapter Six, comprised, in addition to readings, the placement of real bread and real wine on the real table of the altar, where it was offered with 19

Equestrian Saint, ca. AD 500. Munich, Staatliche Sammlung C.S. Inv. No. 951 [Museum photo.]

The find spots of the pagan panels, surveyed in Chapter One, indicate that they had cultic uses both in temples and in domestic situations. Three settings of Egyptian worship must come under consideration: temples, neighbourhood chapels, and homes. In the grand temples official cult was conducted by an enormous bureaucracy of priests and officers who were maintained for centuries by the government, whether Pharaonic, Ptolemaic, or Roman. All this temple ceremonial, including grand public display and processions fell into sharp decline with the discontinuance of imperial support. Imperial dedicatory inscriptions on temples disappear entirely after AD 190. Traditional religion did not then simply disappear, but was continued by popular support on a diminished scale in the temples, as well as in a multitude of smaller neighborhood chapels that were scattered throughout the towns. To some extent this private worship mimicked the official temple worship but it also supplemented it with everyday rituals of a more personal kind, such as purifications, fertility cures, and fortune telling. Two such chapels with mural decoration are considered here, in Theadelphia and Karanis, which have appeared in the excavations of the Fayum but have failed to attract much attention. On a more intimate level there are the ordinary homes where private persons kept their devotional objects in niches or little oratory spaces. Reexamination of the provenance of excavated panels is found to supply valuable clues overlooked in the original reports. The compositions of the panel paintings in our corpus often parallel the venerable sculptural images in use in official temple cult. At the same time similar divine subjects can be found in the wall paintings and the small religious finds of the Fayum chapels and private houses, which help to situate our new corpus of paintings in their Egyptian theological setting. The novelty of the framed format in Egypt must be insisted upon. The enormous artistic output of the Pharaonic period never included wooden panel-paintings. Our investigation must therefore necessarily look to religious usages in the wider Graeco-Roman world. Historical sources and inscriptions often witness to the use of religious panel-paintings, and they are depicted frequently in Pompeian paintings representing their use in domestic contexts and country shrines. The relevance of this votive situation to our Egyptian paintings is guaranteed in papyri and by dedicatory inscriptions on four of our corpus panels (Chapter Two). This practice, by which one discharged one’s duty to acknowledge divine favors by offering a return to the divinity, is widely documented in inscriptions in the Graeco-Roman world. Moreover votive inscriptions in traditional Greek format have been found the whole length of the Nile documenting the penetration of this custom into Egypt. The custom of votive offerings lies behind a very large portion of the artistic commissions of the ancient world.

physical gestures including incense and song, and was then re-distributed to and consumed by the faithful in church. These were complex, participatory rituals with gestures that bore some resemblances to pre-Christian worship such as the offerings of first fruits or the temple offerings of Egyptian worship. David Frankfurter has singled out other areas of pagan cultic practices in Egypt that were continued by Christian observances, including celebrations for the rising of the Nile, the frequenting of curative shrines for a rite called incubation, and the maintenance of temple libraries for the transmission of sacred texts. But the strongest and most dramatic continuity has generally been overlooked, and that is the continuance of ancient practice of “votive offerings” in images. The icon practice, by which one established an exchange with the divinity by offering an image as thank offering for benefits received, is widely documented in inscriptions in the Graeco-Roman world and it continues strong into the Christian context in which it seems to constitute one of the principal motivations behind the use of icons. Cult is the most contested issue of modern icon study, as a sizeable contingent of scholars agree with Mango and Brubaker that the veneration of images had no place in early Christian worship. But our project explores evidence to the contrary. We believe that the cultic use of panel paintings was a continuous tradition from Antiquity into Christianity. That tradition evolved and developed, it expanded and contracted, and the images that it generated continued to change. Yet it seems to be a strong line of cultural continuity and deserves to be studied as such. The doctrinaire segregation of pagan from Christian deprives us of the light that each can shed on the other. On the one hand, the Christian phenomenon cannot be properly understood apart from the ancient religiosity from which it grew. Icons in fact may be the single most important material continuity from paganism to be found in Christian worship (whether medieval or modern). On the other hand, the Christian side of the continuity sheds valuable light on the pre-Christian cult of images, and some of the most revealing texts that can be brought to bear on the pagan practices are writings of Christian authors which refer to the continuity between the two. In the first centuries of the Christian era, pagans and Christians occupied the same space physically and mentally. The task before us is to understand the conditions of that cohabitation as manifest in these important and yet neglected remains which the extraordinary climate of Egypt has fortunately preserved for us. Admittedly, ancient Christian authors were anxious to distinguish and segregate their religious practices from those of their pagan neighbors, contrasting their “new” spiritual rites with the “bloody” sacrifices of olden times (though animal sacrifice had been largely discontinued in the third century, more for economic than religious reasons). 20

CONTINUITY IN PAINTING TECHNIQUES

Monastery of Sinai. This is a radically new painting template extending the composition onto the wing panels in a tripartite composition, whose possibilities were explored throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Related to it and similar in purpose is a new multi-register hierarchic template of figures in graduated scale around a central dominant figure. Our examples demonstrate its immediate popularity in Late Antiquity in examples both pagan and Christian. In the painting process itself Muller has studied the continuities in the preparation of the boards, in the medium, in the pigments employed, and in the manner of applying the paint. Since the 1990’s the refinement in analytical methods, as Muller explains, has put at the conservator’s disposal an array of sophisticated new techniques for the detection of the components of ancient paintings that has simultaneously reduced greatly the quantity of sample required for testing and increased greatly the accuracy of the results. Techniques of high-pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC), gas chromatography/mass spectometry (GC/MC), immunoflorescence microscopy (IMF), and encypme-linked Immunosorbent assay (ELISA) have been employed on our panels by conservators at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The single most important discovery that has emerged from this technical study is the identification of a dozen instances of egg tempera. Well known as the standard medium of Italian Renaissance painting, this medium has recently been reported in mural painting in Macedonia in the Alexandrian period, and Muller now reports its familiarity in our corpus of

The subsequent connections of our paintings to European medieval art were suggested from the outset by Otto Rubensohn 1905, R. Pagenstechter 1919, and Franz Cumont 1939. The relationship between the two bodies of paintings is investigated here on several levels, the most basic of which is the technical analysis. Fundamental has been Muller’s technical examination of the materials and methods of the paintings. Because we were the first to examine many of the Egyptian panel-paintings from this point of view we felt obliged to describe our findings as fully as possible, to try to match the standards of observation expected in archaeological reporting nowadays. The data is as comprehensive as possible, within the latitude allowed by the different collections now housing the pieces, and we think we have assembled the largest data bank of ancient painting on wood panels. We have taken care to make the data as useable as possible to future researchers. The lines of physical continuity between our corpus and paintings of the Middle Ages and Renaissance are often startling. Norman Muller has traced numerous specific connections in the making of the paintings, in their construction and framing, which also reveal important innovations (Chapter Three). Most striking is the invention of the triptych painting format, which we will argue was introduced from the pagan use of door panels for little shrines designed to carry statuettes of the gods. The ancient pagan door construction was readily put to use in the early Christian triptych icons, many of which survive in the collection of St Catherine’s 21

panel paintings, along with the complete absence of encaustic. Tempera was far more malleable a medium than encaustic (which required an elevated temperature to keep in fluid). This discovery constitutes a new vital link in the history of art. Panel paintings are eminently portable, and once introduced egg tempera became the standard medium in Italy until gradually replaced by the Flemish introduction of linseed oil in the late fifteenth century. One must hypothesize then that the Egyptian panel paintings of Late Antiquity were linked to the Renaissance by the icons of Sinai, which remain still unstudied from a technical point of view, but which in composition and iconography are clearly connected with our corpus on one end and with Renaissance painting on the other. This is the chain of continuity in the long history of panel-painting. The Christian icons fit so neatly into the patterns of their Late Antique predecessors that ancient viewers were known to confuse them, mistaking paintings of the full-bearded Christ for Zeus or vice versa. (Figure, Intro. 9, Equestrian Caravan Guardian, Cairo JE31570) & (Figure, Intro. 10, Equestrian Saint, Munich Staatliche Sammlung C.S. Inv. No. 951.) One would not be stretching the term to say the Antique cultic panels and the Christian icons speak the same visual language. In the stance or pose of the figures, in their gestures, their accoutrements of dress, their thrones, or weapons, in their static look, their shining haloes, their mandorlas of light, their more-than-human dignity, the figures are closely related. Not only the vocabulary but even the nuances seem to speak the same dialect, including such niceties of etiquette as the hierarchy among figures or the subtleties of gaze. These connections will be pursued within the single units of iconography, comparing for example Christ to Serapis in the class of Jovian iconography [Malibu 74.AP.21], or examining the relationship of the enthroned Mary to her predecessor goddesses of Egypt (Isis and Serapis, Malibu 74 AP 20-22, Isis, Assiout 82; Isis, Kellis; Isis Tebtynis 212]. Since the imagery in these paintings includes the most popular figures of European art the significance of the connections cannot be exaggerated. One might say Christ and Mary learned their divine manners from the gods and goddesses of Egypt. Further, beyond the single figures the iconography of groups of figures permits one to follow larger units within the pantheon. The parallel of the relationship of Mary to her Child Jesus with the ancient Isis to her Child Harpocrates has a long history of study and our corpus has new information on the subject with the addition of two fragmentary examples of panels of Isis lactans (Tebtynis 227; Tebtynis 229) (Chapter Five). The subject was hitherto undocumented in panel paintings. Other two-figure units also deserve attention. Paired divinities and saints were popular units on both pagan and Christian panel paintings. For example the corpus contains two instances of Soknebtynis with a companion god (Ale-

xandria 22978; Berlin 15978) and three instances of Heron with an axe-wielding companion (Berlin 15979; Brussels E 7409; Etampes private). These paired divinities seem to set the pattern for the introduction of pairs such as Christ and Saint Menas in the Louvre, or Saints Sergius and Bacchus in Sinai. (Figure Intro. 11) The divinities of the old order kept company with one another, and we have good evidence of this in the formation of domestic oratories and chapels in the Fayum. The New Templates of Panel-Painting Perhaps the most exciting innovation in picture composition in our corpus is the introduction of the two new image templates, the triptych and the multi-register hierarchy which would have a major impact on Western art. Late Antiquity has generally been treated as the tail end of a great era artistically, but in architecture Judith McKenzie’s recent re-appraisal of the Alexandrian baroque seems to define a period of remarkable innovation impacting late Roman, early Byzantine, and Omayyad architecture. In panel painting, Late Antiquity exhibited a similar burst of creative energy—perhaps the most remarkable since the Classic era of Greek painting—an accomplishment that forecasts the future of European painting. The triptych as a painting protected by closing doors had existed in ancient Greece, but the idea of extending the painting field from the center onto the door panels to create a three-part folding composition can be demonstrated to have been first introduced in our corpus. Alongside the triptych our panels show the related template of tiered hierarchically scaled figures grouped together around a dominant figure in the center, either as a large enthroned divinity or as an out-scaled bust-length figure. The center figure may be Horus or Soknebtynis with smaller attendant divinities on either side, while on a lower register one finds another tier of divine powers on still a smaller scale (Cairo JE 31571a and Oxford 1922.238; Cairo JE 31571b) (Figure Intro. 7a). These carefully contrived compositions of ranked figures are an invention contemporary with the triptych and served a similar purpose of organizing in an easily comprehensible form a complex pantheon that was expanding with the importation of foreign gods, a truly cosmopolitan pantheon. The new template was soon picked up in the Christian painted prayer niches of the monasteries, in mural painting elsewhere in the Christian realm, as well as in grand mosaic apse compositions in Rome and Constantinople. These are new ways of visualizing the divine that were to dominate the development of Christian art. Contrary to Finney’s provocative study, the true challenge for the Christian artist was not the problem of representing an “Invisible God,” but of representing the all too visible God in Christ. As expressed in the Gospel of John, “The Word 22

Soknebtunis Presiding over Armed Gods, fourth century AD. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum no. 1922.238 with Cairo, Egyptian Museum of Cairo, no. JE 31571a, fourth century AD. Drawing by Henri Choimet [Choimet drawing]

Santa Prudenziana, Mosaico absidale con cristo docente in trono, circondato dagli apostoli; al di sopra, la croce gemmata accompagnata dagli esseri dell’Apocalisse.

course of history the Egyptian sky-god Horus had appeared as a hawk, as a hawk-headed man, and as a winged solar disk, but under the name of Harpocrates (Horus the Child) he is represented as the child of Isis and Osiris and cultivated as a special protector of children and of family life. Identified by the habitual child’s gesture of his right finger to his mouth, his image has been found in countless terracotta figurines in the houses of the Fayum which provide the context for the unprovenanced painting. The painting gives him a garland of grape leaves in his hair and a large bunch of grapes in his hand, re-identifying Harpocrates as the Greek god Dionysus, a unique force of fertility, sensuality, and frenzy who conquered the East for Hellenic civilization. No surviving painting from Antiquity presents a better handling of human flesh in so delicate a web of hatching and cross-hatching in different tones. In this syncretic process the Egyptian Harpocrates, god of the dawn, suffers no diminution but rather acquires the additional roles of the potent Greek god of cultivation, who had already triumphed in India well ahead of Alexander’s military and political triumph there. It is in parallel processes, we will argue, that iconography of Christ was defined against the old imagery of Zeus and the iconography of Mary against that of Isis. The origin of Christian painting is a troublesome agenda. The fourth century AD marks the demise of statuary of the gods; when Constantine in 331 dedicated a gilded statue of Fortuna to celebrate his victory in the battle of Chrysopolis, it was a re-used piece, like all the other sculptures that he assembled to decorate his new capital of Constantinople. He did not commission a new sculptural program. While portrait sculpture of civic officials continued to take up some of the sculptors’ energies the gods are missing. Painting became the primary arena of artistic invention, its borders enlarged to include the new media of mural mosaics and manuscript illumination. The more “spiritual” nature of the two-dimensional medium may have recommended it over the “corporal” reality of sculpture-in-the-round, which had been the preferred medium for the gods the old pagan world. Christians wanted to think that their art departed radically from the mores they had rejected. Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, in expressing his resistance to the introduction of icons into the public church setting of Christian worship also announced what he believed to be the real challenge of Christian art, the representation of visions like that on Mount Thabor, which knocked the Apostles off their feet (Chapter Four). How could mere paint carry such a punch? But that is exactly what the artists attempted in the grand new churches which were being erected, often with imperial support, in sparkling mosaics of super-human scale in the following century. The fifth century is the age of the great visions in church decoration, and by good fortune

became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father. . . No one has ever seen God; the only Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he has revealed him” (John 1:1418). In Christ Christians thought they had seen God. The problem was where He belonged in the world of the crowded and ever expanding pantheons of gods. The solution on the artistic level, which certainly in many ways reflected the abstract theological thinking of the day, was exactly the way artists had already been inserting new apparitions of divinity in the old pantheon, that is, in the process of “syncretism.” Syncretism is the continual re-working of the gods’ imagery. Among the most stunning manifestations of this process is the Harpocrates-Dionysus of the Cairo Egyptian Museum, surprisingly neglected by historians of Ancient art. In the 24

at the church of St Paul’s f.l.m. in Rome. (Figure Intro. 8) The visionary composition combined the Old Testamentary vision of Ezekiel with the vision of St John on Patmos of the Four-and-Twenty Elders at the end of time. A generation later, in 473 the emperor Leo I, in thanksgiving for having a grandson to follow him on the throne, inserted a splendid golden mosaic icon of his offering thanks to the Virgin Mother of God. He placed his royal family alongside the Divine Family of Jesus and Mary. By the end of the century icons were impacting church decoration in a major way, for images of the multiple visions of Christ were circulating on portable panel-paintings to Saint Sophia in Constantinople and the newly discovered Red Monastery of Sohag on the Nile, Bolman 2015, forthcoming (Chapter Six). Over sixty years ago Ernst Kitzinger posed what has been

enough of it survives to convey the accomplishment of the new art. In Rome the church of St Pudenziana (Figure Intro. 12) (410) received a mosaic icon of totally trans-temporal nature showing a super-human-sized Christ overseeing the celebration of the Sacrament of the altar, under Ezekiel’s Cherubic Vision and surrounded by the Apostles of the age of Augustus. Meanwhile in far off Phboi on the Nile, stories were circulating about the grand vision that the abbot Pachomius, the severe law-giver of Egyptian monasticism, had seen of an icon of Christ between Angels above the altar on the golden east wall of his church. The abbot was struck with fear and trembling at the sight and spoke directly to his Savior and the angels in the vision. By mid century (440-60) Honorius and Galla Placidia were decorating a huge wall of gold with the Pachomian vision of Christ between two angels 25

Christ Presiding over Four and Twenty Elders, with Cherubim and Sts Peter and Paul, 440-50 AD. Rome, S. Paolo f.l.m., watercolor cod Barb. Lat. 4406 (1630) [Source Andaloro, L’Orizzonte, I, 8. 399.]

Calcedonian-Monophysite breakup of the Christian Church. In the absence of formal decrees governing sanctuary icons the practice of these important churches was accepted as normative. Surprisingly both programs were built around the same triple vision of Christ as eternal (the vision of Ezekiel), as born of Mary (the Isaiah vision), and as manifest in the church (which we call the “ecclesiastical” vision). The Saint Sophia program we have tried to reconstruct from the description of Paul the Silentiary and from archaeological remains of the templon of its neighbour St Polyeuktos (avoided by Byzantine art historians). The icons relied on and exemplified a new understanding of the Liturgy as an arena of imaginative drama, developed by hymnographers such as Romanos the Melode. In the fifth and sixth centuries the most striking aspect of Christian art is the wholesale diffusion of these compositions from icons. The portability of panel-paintings made them critical for the dissemination of ideas and designs. Icon compositions originating in Egypt or the Holy Land show up cut into stone reliefs in far off Armenia in the sixth century, including even triptych icons. The strong, commanding compositions of icons were also readily mimicked in early manuscript illuminations in Syria and Constantinople as well as in mosaics in Rome. As panel-paintings had been the leading edge of painting in the fifth century BC, Christian panel-paintings or icons were the leading edge of the development of Christian art in the sixth century AD, inspiring not only other works of art but flights of poetry and profundities of theology.

accepted as the classic formulation of the problem of early Byzantine art, the “tremendous increase and intensification of the cult of images, beginning in the second half of the sixth century.” Appealing to a thesis proposed earlier by André Grabar, Kitzinger theorized that the new growth of icons was due to “a process whereby the icon replaced the relic as a principal object of devotion in the Greek Orthodox Church.” In spite of the rich flowering of studies in the interval, and the addition of important archaeological finds, the Grabar-Kitzinger hypothesis still remains the basic formula for describing the development. An important new perspective on the whole problem is suggested by scholarship concerning the theological treatise formally devoted to the “defence of icons.” This is a serious new theological genre

addressing icon cult which can now be traced continuously from Moschus the Monk in the fifth century, to Leontius of Cyprus and Vrt’anes of Dvin in the beginning of the seventh, to John of Damascus in the eighth. The arguments of the theologians do not depend on a relic-to-icon connection but on a Eucharist-to-icon connection. The Eucharistic connection of icon cult is borne out by the evidence of icons placed on and around the templon screen, both in Constantinople and in Egypt (Chapter Six). The most important monuments in this development are the second chancel screen of Saint Sophia (563), and the newly discovered sanctuary decoration of the great Red Monastery near Sohag (ca.600), both of which address from opposite sides the major theological issue of the day, namely the 26

ancient cultic uses of the icons as offerings, and the Council of Nicaea itself, trying to resolve the Iconoclast issue, still uses the classic pre-Christian terminology for describing icon use (Chapter Eight). Icons were intimately connected with the origins and growth of Christianity itself. The ultimate success of the panel painting tradition in Europe is too vast a subject to follow, but some of the main developments can be indicated. The Enthroned Mother of God enjoyed an extraordinary popularity from its Isiac origins to its Sinai canonization to its promulgation in apse compositions and its eventual appearance in Italian panel paintings. The Mother and Child became the commonest subject of Christian art, even outnumbering images of Christ alone. At the same time the Blessing Christ in a mandorla of light, replaced Horus and Soknebtynis in the center of the multi-register templates in icons of the Ascension and in early Christian apse compositions. This becomes a vehicle for the Christian translation of the Vision of Ezekiel into the single most important piece of medieval cathedral iconography, first in the apse painting above the bishop’s throne and eventually, in Gothic monuments, in the tympanum sculpture over the main portal. Triptychs accounted for thirty percent of the early Sinai panels, and while Middle Byzantine wood evidence is scarce, Byzantine ivories of imperial manufacture pick up the triptych technology and develop the compositional possibilities by extending the imagery both inside and outside the door panels. It is this more complex form of the triptych that reaches Italy and the rest of Europe. The early panel-paintings of Roman Egypt therefore are firmly linked with the development of European painting. The pagan panel-paintings are to be seen not as distant foreshadowings of medieval paintings, remote prototypes destined to be resurrected and revived later in Constantinople or in Paris; they are the actual living stem from which the Medieval and Renaissance paintings grew. The ancient genre never died. Moreover the continuity of Christian with pagan art suggests an important revision in the religious history of Europe. Early Christianity was not an abstract school of classical philosophy but a palpable cultic expression of beliefs full of rites, gestures, objects, and images. To this extent the discovery of this corpus changes the shape of the history of art and the history of religion.

The Theology of Icons The theological place which Christians assigned to their icons was in many ways more exalted than the place the ancients had assigned to their images. With the exception of a few neo-Platonic philosophers, ancient authors did not much concern themselves with the philosophical problem of whether the gods might inhabit blocks of stone or painted wooden boards. For Christians, however, icons acquired a special niche in Christian dogma, and as early as the second century, they were the subject of serious theological reflection, and the discussion increased in intensity as the cult increased. Because divine immanence in the material world, namely the Incarnation, was a central tenet of Christian faith, the possibility that material images might be vehicles of divine presence was argued on the highest intellectual level. Our evidence that the actual cult of icons was a practice inherited from ancient pre-Christian religion requires some re-examination of what is called “icon theology,” which has been framed anachronistically around the image theory that developed in the ninth century, after the Second Council of Nicaea. In earlier authors image theory was closely tied to the 27

CHAPTER ONE SITES OF DISCOVERY: PLACES OF CULT

The discovery of our corpus of panel-paintings of Roman Egypt has been intimately linked to the discovery of papyri. Papyrus was the paper of the ancient world, manufactured from a Nilotic marsh plant, and in the late nineteenth century the world of Classical studies was riveted by the exploration of discarded papyrus documents from the dumps of farm towns, which had been abandoned in Late Antiquity with the failure of the irrigation system.1 Suddenly a window was opened on the daily life of the ancient world from school boys’ letters home, to divorce contracts, to theatre entertainment. A lost play of Sophocles turned up, and amongChristian texts were arrest warrants in the persecutions and the earliest pages of the Septuagint.2 Panel-paintings were found in the same dumps as the papyri, the sebbakh which the Egyptians mined for fertilizer. Concerning religion in Late Antiquity, the panel paintings and the papyri of Egypt can be considered complementary information systems. Papyri offer copious information on the theology of the gods, the texts of the ancient myths, aretalogies (or hymns of praise), lists of the divine names and titles, calendars of feast days, temple records, and entire theological tracts such as the Book of the Fayum, which was copied in 135 AD for the priestly library of Tebtunis and found by Carlo Antis.3 Papyri also speak, as David Frankfurter demonstrates, on the more personal level of everyday observances of religious practice,“of priests pursuing their tasks, ordinary people preparing for festivals, supplicants requesting the guidance of a god.”4 The painted wooden panels, on the other hand, offer a more experiential measure of popular devotion. They define the gods in the dramatic language of signs, attributes, dress, looks, and gestures, showing us which gods were selected most often for worship whether in homes, neighborhood chapels, or temples, and under what aspects those gods were worshipped. While papyri supply the formulae for the theologians of ancient Egypt, pinakes document the living conversations that took place between gods and men, conveying the glance of gods toward their clients and the reactions of the devout in offering garlands, incense, and libations. The paintings supply the direct connections of the devout with their gods in an emotional and at times even sentimental fashion. The 28

gods were ready to console, defend, strengthen, or sympathize with the beholder. The starting point for the investigation of our corpus of pinakes therefore, must be their archaeological record, which unfortunately is very deficient. The term “corpus” designates a set of paintings on wood panels from Egypt assembled for two distinct purposes, Egyptological and art historical. Rondot, who has chronicled carefully the historiography of the panels, has noted how the first paintings to reach museum collections came without any provenance information whatever.5 Regrettable though the gaps may be, the existing achaeological record of the pinakes still has more information than has been fully exploited. Out of the sixty ancient panels we have under study here, exactly eleven are provenance come from known professional excavations with helpful information about the context of their discovery. This privileged provenanced group within our corpus is a substantial sample, amounting to 18.3 percent, or almost one fifth, of the total corpus of sixty. Two of the discovery sites are temples, one is a chapel in a fortification, but eight are in domestic settings, whether in the private homes themselves or in chapels located within residential areas of town. In this respect we hope to go beyond Rondot’s important item by item unraveling of the iconography and focus on the cultic information to be gleaned from the paintings. We are dealing with the private domain rather than the grand world of official temple worship; the gods may be the same but the formalities are very different. Though these panel paintings escaped Frankfurter’s notice, they belong in his larger picture of the growth of private religious observances in Late Antique Egypt.6 Of these eleven panels from controlled sites, eight come from the fertile farming province of the Fayum, one from nearby Saqqara in Lower Egypt (London, British Museum London BM 1975.7-28.1), one from Edfu in Upper Egypt (Paris, Louvre AF 10878-9) and one from Kellis/Ismant el-Kharab in the Dakhleh Oasis of the Western Desert (preserved at the excavation site). We are also including in our study one non-Egyptian find from Dura Europus in Syria (New Haven 1929.288) which the literature has always interpreted in the 29

Temple of Soknebtunis, Tebtunis. View of the dromos or processional way of the Roman period. Photo. by N. Muller. [Muller photo.]

The Chapel of the Painted Niches, Theadelphia, third century AD. Plan. [JDAI 20 (1905), ﬁg. 6.] D m t r and Kor , the Chapel of the Painted Niches, Theadelphia, third century AD. [JDAI 20, ﬁg. 6.]

INGRESSO CORTILE

CAPPELLA DELLE NICCHIE DIPINTE

context of the Egyptian panels. The Fayum has a privileged place in Egyptian archaeology. A fertile depression 60 km. south of Cairo, the Fayum was irrigated from the Nile with an elaborate canal system developed in Ptolemaic and Roman times, turning it into the most productive farming province of Egypt. Gradually abandoned in Late Antiquity, it was reclaimed by the desert which preserved for modern archaeology the most abundant remains of everyday life in the Late Roman Empire. Following the tracks of the archaeologists who unearthed the panel-paintings, usually in a search for papyri, we must first describe the cultic sites in which the paintings were deployed. Often the accumulation of information over a century of exploration has yielded new clues, which were missed by the original papyrus hunters. Because our first goal is to find a coherent and purposeful story in the panel-paintings, we are also including in our study the discovery of the mural paintings (not done on panels) in three extraordinary chapels which illustrate more fully the intention behind the decoration and religious use of the panels. Two of these sites are within the Fayum, namely the Chapel of the Painted Niches (c. 250) in Theadelphia and the Chapel of the Syncretic Gods (c. 350) of Karanis, but the third is the Imperial Chamber in the Temple of Luxor (301-2) in Upper Egypt. The last is unaccountably completely missing from Rondot’s treatment, though it has been considered by many to be the most significant Late Antique monument in Egypt.7 The chapel murals repeat some of the same iconography as

the panel-paintings and at Luxor they make some attempt to syncretize Roman imperial cult with the Egyptian cult of Amun. The imperial patronage of the Luxor site puts it in a class with the Berlin Septimius Severus and Family (similarly omitted by Rondot). Within the Fayum, the most important site for the discovery of panel-paintings has been Tebtunis (Tell Umm el-Breigat), a town of around 4,000 inhabitants in the second century AD, located around 30 km south of Lake Moeris. Tebtunis has the largest and best preserved temple of the Fayum, published by Rondot.8 (Figure, Chap. I, 1, Temple of Soknebtunis, Tebtunis, View of the dromos or processional way, Photo N. Muller.) The temple was dedicated to the Nile god Sobek, under his local name Soknebtynis, who insured the water supply of the farming district. Here British papyrologists Arthur S. Grenfell and Bernard P. Hunt explored for papyri on behalf of the University of California, Berkeley, employing a work-force of 140 men for three months between 1899 and1900. Two impressive painted door-panels with Military Gods (Berkeley 6.21384-5) and a fragment of a Soknebtynis Enthroned (Berkeley 5.21386) were discovered, but because the papyrologists preserved not the least shred of provenance 30

information, we will defer their discussion.9 The reported success of their papyrus explorations, however, brought Classical archaeologist Otto Rubensohn to Tebtunis to excavate on behalf of the Berlin Museum, in 1902. He began documenting finds beyond the papyri thereby becoming the pioneer in the discovery of panel-paintings. Following the trail of Grenfell and Hunt, Rubensohn excavated houses which the British explorers had bypassed.10 With a smaller team than the British, the German excavator worked swiftly and efficiently, discarding the debris of each successive room into the previously excavated room. The precious papyri were shipped off to Berlin for further study. However, being a Classical archaeologist, Rubensohn saw the value of publishing finds other than the papyri. In Theadelphia, 20 km. north of Tebtunis, his report sketches the larger architectural setting, offering some general information on the building methods of the houses. He noted the widespread use of sun-dried brick, with beams of palm wood for occasional binding courses and for ceilings, and he remarked on the ubiquitous furnishing of the chambers with niches, usually centered or symmetrically placed in the walls. The niches had wooden sills and lintels, and occasionally a niche was given special treatment with an arch and carved pilasters.11 Rubensohn speculated that such ornamented niches were intended to hold works of art. Significantly, he noticed that none of the niches had doors for closure, the way cupboards do in modern homes; their openness put their contents on display, suitable for cult observances.

Wall Paintings of the Chapel of the Painted Niches, Theadelphia When they encountered something out of the ordinary, Rubensohn’s team paused to record the excavation in photographs and drawings, as in the elegant Theadelphia house with details in stone and a remarkable decorated chamber, which we will call the “Chapel of the Painted Niches.”12 (Figure 2, Chapel of the Painted Niches, Theadelphia, 3rd century AD. Plan.) This was Rubensohn’s first major find, the most formal and best organized chapel found in the Fayum, though it has received little notice in the literature. On the south side of a spacious atrium open to the sky, one entered through a triple doorway into a chamber of 5 by 6 meters with an ambitious painted decoration. The three walls were decorated with large rectangles of blue-green fields in ornamental frames, with delicate figures that Rubensohn compared to Pompeian Fourth Style decoration. Each of the three walls contained three niches elevated about a meter above the ground, the central niches slightly wider than the flanking ones. (Figure 3, The Dioscuri, Chapel of the Painted Niches, Theadelphia, 3rd century AD) Enough survived for Rubensohn to identify some of the figures, standing about 1.5 meters high within the niches, which he recorded in sketchy watercolors and photographs that he published in his article. Surprisingly, it is a chapel of Greek gods exclusively. Though they recur in some of our panel-paintings and elsewhere in the Fayum, their concentration here makes a significant state31

The Dioscuri, the Chapel of the Painted Niches,Theadelphia, third century AD. [JDAI 20 (1905), ﬁgs, 13-14.]

ment about the “pantheon” of the Fayum. On the south wall, which faced the visitor upon entering from the courtyard, an enthroned male god occupied the center niche, surviving up to the waist, with single naked youths, the Dioscuri, in the niches on either side of him. Homer refers to them as twin sons of Zeus, who “had honor equal to gods” (Od. 11, 300f), and the father of the gods himself must have been the enthroned figure in the center. The Dioscuri, who commuted daily between heaven and the netherworld, were identified with the constellation Gemini and served to guide ships, which explains their popularity in the Fayum whose wealth depended on shipping grain across the open stretches of the Mediterranean, to Rome, and then to Constantinople starting in the fourth century. One of the Dioscuri is represented with a rudder and they show up on three of our panel-paintings as handsome young soldiers, twice with horses (Cairo JE 87191; Oxford 1922 329; Paris Louvre E 10815). The haloes of the Dioscuri are noteworthy because this is an innovation especially exploited by our panelpaintings with important implications for Christian art. The middle niche of the east wall was occupied by a woman in a dark chiton and white mantel holding a rudder in her right hand, evidently Fortuna/Tyche. Like the Dioscuri she was a guide for shipping, still popular as late as AD 600 when she appears in the Edfu panel to be studied next. (Figure 4, Demeter and Kore, Chapel of the Paintee Niches, Theadelphia, third century AD.) On the left, or east, wall of the chapel the mother and daughter goddesses Demeter (a sister of Zeus)

and Kore, clad in white and black occupied the central niche, with a vase of flowers between them. Demeter wore a crown of grain on her head and Kore a garland of poppies and a kalathos, a basket of produce. Goddesses of grain, we will see them again on a panel-painting placed in a niche in Karanis (Ann Arbor 28807). In addition, in a room adjoining the chapel, a marble relief of the Greek gods of health, Asclepius and Hygeia, had been mortared to the wall. Carved of marble, it was certainly imported from Alexandria. It was a standard votive usage all over the Graeco-Roman world to acknowledge the gift of health by dedicating or offering an image of the gods of health. The natural place for making votive offerings of this sort was in a location dedicated to the gods, such as a temple or shrine. The find of this relief underlines the accepted sacredness of this chapel as a whole. The relief also helped Rubensohn in dating the house after Hadrian (AD 117-138), and coin finds showed that the house continued in use down to Constantine (AD 312-337) when it was abandoned. A date in the mid-third century puts the Chapel of the Painted Niches in the company of the better known chapels of Dura Europus in Syria (pagan, Jewish, and Christian) and the Callistus Catacomb in Rome. Unfortunately the paintings did not survive exposure and the original photographs and watercolours have been lost. Only the publication remains, which conveys little of the true quality of the original. Eight gods constituted a substantial, if incomplete, pantheon, with a great deal of information about 32

have implied the adherence of an initiate to Donysiac religious cult, or would have been a less sacredly charged declaration of paideia in the form of mythological imagery, or would just have been an appropriate and suitably lavish adornment for a nobleman’s drinking party.”15 If one admits the Chapel of the Painted Niches to this discussion, one is clearly shifting the material to a religious sphere where the offering of votives is appropriate. Where the Moscow wood panel-painting of the Love of Ares and Ahprodite (Pushkin, I, ia 5786) belongs, we will have to consider below. The Oratory of Four Gods, Tebtunis (Soknebtynis with Amun, and Heron with Lykourgos) Following further the tracks of Grenfell and Hunt from Theadelphia, which is in the centre of the Fayum, to Tebtunis at the southern corner of the Fayum triangle, Rubensohn happened upon a second remarkable discovery which he dated precisely 28 March 1902.16 The find spot is described by Rubensohn only as the middlemost of a row of three rooms in an otherwise un-remarkable domestic establishment. This particular room then seems to have lacked the formality of design of what we have designated as a “chapel” in the house of Theadelphia, in which niches and paintings were evidently designed for one another. Writing about comparable houses in Karanis, Thelma K.Thomas contrasts the modern specialization of functions in separate rooms—sleeping, dining, reception, work, etc.—with the multi-purpose rooms in the houses of Late Antique Egypt, in which different living activities overlapped or alternated in the same spaces.17 Religious activities need not have required specialized rooms when the cultic objects like panel-paintings or incense burners might be stored and brought out as needed in rooms ordinarily devoted to other living activities. However, in this Tebtunis room a pair of rather imposing painted wood panels (Berlin 15978 and 15979), were permanently installed on pegs in the wall, displaying four divinities, evidently by the same painter and therefore installed within a narrow period of time. These are the earliest panel-paintings from a controlled, professional excavation, something which makes them very significant for the history of the medium. In Antiquity, the installation of divine images was not a matter of interior decoration but a gesture of worship which might establish a focus for further gestures of worship. The custom of dedicating thank offerings to the gods in the images has been explained by W.H.D. Rouse.18 Placing the offered image in a room was a way of recognizing and/or designating that particular space as sacred, set apart from ordinary profane uses. In ancient religious usage the dedication of an object or image to the gods made that object legally the property of the god and therefore untouchable, anathema, as will be further explained in the following chapter. It could not be moved or alienated. Hence even when the Tebtunis house was abandoned in the early third century the panels were left behind, as Rubenso-

Egyptian religion in the mid-third century. Clearly the placement of the figures in niches created a sacred space, distinct from general living spaces. The chapel was the largest room in the house, introduced by its formal courtyard, and it defined the purpose of this building. The higher quality of the architecture argues that it belonged to the socially elite governing class of the Fayum. Instructive comparisons can be made with the grand Dionysus and Ariadne tapestry of the Abegg Stiftung, in Riggisberg, carbon dated to the late fourth century.13 The arrangement of one or two gods in each of the 2-meter arches of the tapestry matches the figure arrangement and the dimensions of the Chapel of the Painted Niches. In both works the sacred subject-matter is exclusively Greek and the figures are haloed. A piece of Christian textile found along with the tapestry implied that its final use was in a Christian burial, but in its original use as a hanging it must defined a sacred space of similar form and dimensions to the Chapel of the Painted Niches. There clearly existed in the Fayum a wealthy clientele with Greek gymnasium education who were commissioning images of this kind. Moreover, yet a third example of the same niched architecture with haloed Greek sacred figures is offered by another large tapestry, now divided among the museums of Bern, Boston, and Cleveland.14 The discussion of these arched tapestries between Ja Elsner and Lazlo Török revolves around the question of how seriously to accept the theological dimensions of the material. Elsner asks whether the imagery “would 33

hn reports, including the hemp cord and the peg in the wall from which was hung Berlin 15978. (Figure 5, Sobek-Kronos and Amun –Ra, mid-second century AD,Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Aegyptisches Museum 15978 (lost) ). The panels had been dedicated and they remained the sacred property of the gods. That this is the basic religious ritual underlying the panel-paintings from Egypt is best demonstrated by their inscriptions, Chapter Two, and the Christian continuance of the custom is also documented in inscriptions and historical sources. We will therefore refer to the room in which Rubensohn found these paintings as something less formal than a “chapel” but still a designated place of prayer or religious observance, for which I propose the term “domestic oratory.” 19 Rubensohn’s papyrus finds of the second half of the second century indicated that this Tebtunis house was abandoned at the beginning of the third, hence the paintings in the oratory can be dated to the mid second century, a century earlier than the Chapel of the Painted Niches in Theadelphia. In sharp contrast to that chapel, however, this oratory had none of the Greek gods. Individual piety had a striking range of choices in the Fayum. When examined closely the paintings say a great deal about the religious rites conducted in this oratory. The first painting (Berlin 15978) was unfortunately lost in World War II, leaving only Rubensohn’s detailed description and the black and white photographic record.20 When originally recovered, almost nothing was missing and Rubensohn was able to re-assemble the entire panel, including its fitted eight-point frame. It measured 62.5 by 59.5 cm. with its frame. Of the second painting Rubensohn could only find the right

half, which survives in the Staatliche Museen, Aegyptisches Museum (Berlin 15979). (Figure 6, H ron and Lykourgos midsecond century AD, Berlin, Staatliche Museeen, Aegyptissssches Museum, 15979). In 2012 Margaret Puhl of the museum curatorial staff felicitously located previously un-identified fragments of the lower part of the panel, virtually completing the figure. A little smaller than the first, when intact, this panel would have measured 57.5 by 45 cm. without its frame, according to Rondot’s calculations. It must be noted in passing how close these dimensions are to Christian devotional panel paintings across the long historical lifespan of the medium. For example, the sixth century Sinai Enthroned Mother of God with Angels and Saints measures 68.5 by 49.7, the Sinai Annunciation of the 12th century, 63.1 by 42.2 cm., while in Europe, in the late Middle Ages, the center panel of the Merode Altarpiece is 64 by 63 cm. And all three of these Christian paintings, like the first of Rubensohn’s panels, show sacred figures enthroned. The two Rubensohn paintings, besides being so close in size, are also very close in style. The eyes, which gaze slightly above the beholder, are rendered with the same sequence of strokes with distinct lashes on the upper lid and a deep band of shadow below. The noses are blocky and heavy like wedges of wood. The hair and beard are combed in closely compacted curls. But most striking is the very individual manner of painting the haloes in concentric shades of beige with radiating sparkles of light shooting out in individual dots of diminishing size. In preChristian times haloes are relatively rare, but twenty six of the figures in our corpus are haloed.21 However, it must be pointed 34

Heron and Lykourgos, mid-second century. Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Aegyptisches Museum 15979. [Museum photo.] Heron and Lykourgos, mid-second century. Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Aegyptisches Museum 15979. [Museum photo.]

Incense Altars before Eagles Carrying Crosses. From Faras Cathedral, Nubia, seventh century. 25 cm. high. Cairo, Egyptian Museum no. EA 606 [Museum photo, or Shaw and Nicholson, p. 98.]

non-Greek.23 They are gods of a military character, who are new additions to the Egyptian pantheon, arriving during the Roman period. In spite of the losses to the painting, the reappearance of this identical pair of figures in Brussels (E 7409) and in Etampes allows us to complete safely the iconography. This soldier-god, stiffly posed in cuirass, with a massive neck, stubby beard, a wedge-like nose, and ears of exaggerated length is Heron.24 He is paired with a wild axe-wielding god whom Rondot has identified as Lycourgos, referred to as Dionysus’competitor in the Iliad VI, 130. Together they form a popular unit in the Fayum, and their history and iconography have been carefully plotted by Rondot, in spite of the complete absence of literary sources that might explain their popularity. Heron and Lycourgos entirely lack an Egyptian mythology and they are unknown in the papyri.25 This selection of these two new gods alongside two very traditional divinities vividly demonstrates the freedom of personal initiative that characterized private religion in the Fayum. The successful integration of the new gods into the old pantheon is achieved by a very painterly device, the equalizing of their haloes. The artist has chosen a very original design of sparkling rays over concentric circles of beige nimbus for all four gods to demonstrate that the new gods had exactly the same brilliance as the old. The new gods ranked with the most ancient and authentic gods of Egypt. Haloes are rarely employed in Pharaonic or in Classical Greek art. But in the corpus of panel-paintings from Roman Egypt they suddenly become a major theme: twenty six of the panels assign haloes to the gods, and this is a peculiar and valuable contribution of the corpus. Artists invented haloes in a great diversity of designs, which have been carefully catalogued and described by Rondot26. Significantly, however; Rondot was at a loss to find a key to their uses. He observes that the different types, whether solid or radiant, and the different colors (white, rose, cream, beige, brown), cross over from one pantheon to the other (Egyptian, Greek, Syro-Arabian) and from one divinity to the next. They do not break down into a code of iconography the way an art historian might like. The halo, as proven by its universal adoption for the Christian pantheon, was more than an iconographic trifle, for it entails a profound subversion of classical aesthetics. The modeling in shadows and highlights, which was invented by Apollodorus and Zeuxis in the last quarter of the fifth century BC, was predicated on a consistent light falling on the subject from a source oblique to the viewer’s line of vision. By placing the light source in a halo shining at the viewer from within the painting, the artist of the Tebtunis panels has deliberately destroyed the careful illusion on which classical painting was built and has embarked on a search for a very different sort of illusion. The primary light bursts around the head of the divinity, immediately summoning the attention of the devout viewer

out that only these two panel-paintings have this unique sparkling halo. Very likely the same painter was employed on both, which he must have executed within a fairly short period of time. The sparkling halo is his individual signature. The extraordinary character of the combined pantheon cultivated here has not been remarked upon nor have all the cultic clues been assembled. In the first painting, two of the most ancient gods of the Egyptian pantheon are seated side by side as if in their temple, on a panelled wooden throne with a decorative cornice of uraei, that is cobras. On the left is Soknebtynis, or Sobek, in his role as the god who managed the waters of the Nile and who was accordingly the special patron of the farming province of the Fayum. He was the patron god of the temple of Tebtunis, the largest in the Fayum. Dressed in two shades of light green (a color that decorators used to call eau de nil), he holds a little crocodile in his lap. Leaving behind his more ancient theriomorphic iconography, which would have shown him with the head of a crocodile (as in Moscow 5786), here he assumes the human guise of a Hellenistic god. In a, syncretism which Rondot has carefully analyzed, Soknebtynis takes the classic pose of a scepter-bearing, enthroned Kronos, the son of Heaven and the father of Zeus, with a fold of his mantle drawn over his head, as if taking part in a religious rite, and the hooked scepter, or sicle, for reaping in his right hand. This is also the implement with which Kronos was said to have castrated his father (to insusre his unique inheritance). The acceptance of this syncretism in Late Antiquity of Sobek with the Greek god is certified, as Rondot explains, by its express mention as “Sobek-Kronos” in the theological “summa,” The Book of the Fayum. Syncretism is the term commonly used for the attempt to reconcile the Egyptian gods with the pantheon of their Greek conquerors.22 To the right sits Amun-Ra, possibly the most important of all Egyptian gods. He holds a bunch of grain in his left and an unidentified branch in his right. His ancient animal iconography appears in ram’s horns on his head and a little ram at his feet. His white tunic has a decorated necking. He was regarded as the king of the gods and in Ptolemaic times was equated with Zeus. The pairing of Sobek with Amun in this fashion, Rondot explains, was referred to as synnaoi theoi, meaning gods who shared the same temple and shared in the worship offered in that temple. According to the Egyptian convention, the god placed on the left is the principal dedication of the temple. In the great temple of Tebtunis worship of Soknebtynis took the particular the form of mummified crocodiles, offered in the thousands. The temple of Tebtunis was a centre of pilgrimage. Offering this painting of the subject in a domestic oratory was a way of extending that temple worship into the domestic sphere. The two divinities on the second panel painting, Heron and Lycourgos, are markedly non-Egyptian, but they are also 36

to the god’s face, as the god lifts his head and gazes slightly above the beholder; then around this light a soft secondary light bathes equally all the surfaces in the painting, defining carefully the graceful contours of the divine figures employing lines of different weight, with wider lines to define the principal body parts and the hems of the garments. This tends to give the drawing a special self-sufficiency, which increases over time with the emergence of what we are calling the “contour style” of Karanis in the late third and fourth century, and this is the design tradition inherited by the Coptic icons from the paintings of our corpus. Prescinding from the push-pull of light-and-shadow of Classical mim sis, the artist sought a new kind of illusion. The Heron panel gives us two important clues to the rites that accompanied these images in the domestic oratory, for the paintings were objects of veneration. The first clue is the unnaturally large ears of Heron. Indeed this is fairly constant in Heron’s occurrences in the panels of our corpus. This places Heron with a number of Egyptian gods who were given the epithet mestsytmis “who hears petitions,” meaning they were especially mindful of the prayers of suppliants, and this merciful quality of the god was conveyed by giving them large ears.27 A special space in the temple called the “contra-temple,” accessible to the lay public, was set aside for making petitions to such gods.28 By placing a listening Heron in a domestic oratory, the patron of the Tebtunis oratory brought temple cultic usage into the home. In one’s private oratory one could stop to speak to Heron on one’s way to work or to the market; the god invited personal confidences. Another important clue to the cult of the Tebtunis oratory emerged when Margaret Pohl, curator in charge of the paintings of the Egyptian Collection in Berlin, discovered a set of previously unidentified fragments of the lower half of the figure, which she very kindly shared with us. In his right hand Heron holds a ceremonial dish, a patera to make an offering to the Serpent entwined on Lykourgos’ staff, which is a fixed element in Heron iconography. The nature of the offering is important. Rondot argues that the Berlin Heron, as well as the ones in Brussels, Etampes and Providence (59.030), is pouring red wine. But, on closer observation, in Providence, Etampes and Brussels, the altar is shown in a sketchy symbol with a triangular flame on top, and in the “new” fragments of Berlin (15979) a ray of sparkling light can be seen above the altar, implying a fire on the altar for incense. In these paintings, Heron’s offering of incense is intended to propitiate the sacred Serpent, and to give an example to his devotees of what they should also be doing before his image. On the other hand an offering of wine would have been made with a ewer, oinocho . Incense figures very large in our story. Offering a fragrant pinch before an image was a simple, meaningful, and extremely accessible gesture of veneration of the god. The delicacy of

the rite is beautifully illustrated in the ivory of the Symmachi in the Victoria and Albert Museum, in which a woman with a wreath of ivy in her hair (most likely a priestess of Eleusis) sprinkles a few grains over the flaming coals on a garlanded altar.29 The everyday ordinariness of incense is what made it into so horrible a test in the trials of the “treasonous” Christian martyrs. Its popularity in the Fayum is dramatically demonstrated by the archaeological finds, but because altars are very portable, they get separated from the paintings losing their connections to the images. Seventy-seven actual altars emerged from the excavations in the town of Karanis on the north side of Lake Moeris, in the Fayum. (Figure 7, Incense Altars from Karanis, Roman Perios, Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, Ann Arbor MI).They are now preserved in the collection of the Kelsey Museum. In an unpublished dissertation, Herman O.A. Keinath described the altars as made of stone or ceramic, both for incense (with a dish-like cavity for the fire) and for libations (which were hollow for receiving the liquid).30 The gesture of offering incense appears in no less than seven of the panels in our corpus (Ann Arbor 88617; Berlin 15979; Berlin 17957; Brussels E 7409; Cairo JE 31569; Etampes; Providence 59.030). This is just what the pious expected to do when they came to venerate the paintings. Papyri expand the data concerning the rite, with the interesting information that different gods required different incenses, as Beatrice Casseau has pointed out.31 “The proper incense of Kronos is Styrax, for its heavy and fragrant perfume; of Zeus, malabathron; of Ares, kostos; of Helios, frankincense; of Aphrodite, Indian nard; of Hermes, cassia; of Selene, myrrh.”32 A casual passerby could have identified which god was being venerated by the scent emanating from a given doorway. (Figure 8. Incense Altars and Cross-bearing Eagles, relief from Faras Cathedral, Nubia, seventh century, Cairo Egyptian Museum, EA 601) The Christian Chapel, Edfu (Fortuna/Tych ) Chronologically the next panel-painting to emerge from 37

Fortuna Anthousa, ca. AD 600. Reconstruction by T. Mathews of templon ﬁtting. [Jaca Book artist from Mathews’ drawing] Fortuna Anthousa, ca. AD 600. Paris, Louvre Museum AF 10878 and 10879. [Museum photo.]

controlled archaeological excavations was found in Edfu in the early 1920s, and it happens to be of immediate relevance to Rubensohn’s question of the relationship of the Egyptian panel-paintings to European art. Although its date places it outside the scope of Rondot’s study, the painting documents very elegantly how an ancient goddess of enormous popularity in Egypt as well as the entire Graeco-Roman world was able to slip smoothly into an unquestionably Christian context without losing anything of her traditional identity -- to be canonized equivalently as a Christian saint. This panel may be seen then as a kind of test piece for our thesis of a seamless transition. In 1921-22 Henri Henne, excavating for papyri on behalf of the Institut français d’archéologie orientale along the southeast slope of the great temple of Horus in Edfu, found a thin wooden board with a painting of Fortuna-Tyche. (Figure 9, Fortuna “Kal Anthousa” ca. AD 600, Paris, Louvre Museum AF10878-9) The site of the discovery was within a residential complex, in a room labelled “c”, beside a little alley which the archaeologists had labelled “Gregorius” Street after a stone inscription found there. Other wood fragments from the site, now in the Louvre, include a beam of furniture with three incised crosses and a wooden relief figure identified very plausibly by curator Dominique Bénazeth as the Blind Man Cured by Christ.33 These finds were not precisely reported by Henne and it is unclear how they fit in the chapel, but their Christian meaning amplifies the Christian evidence of the painting of Fortuna-Tyche. Moreover, the painted panel itself, supplies a great deal of evidence about its own context, which did not begin to emerge until seventy years after the excavation when Marie-Hélène Rutschowscaya and Alain Desreumaux took up the study of the piece in 1992.34 The figure on the panel is painted in palimpsest over Aramaic texts of New Testament passages. Desreumaux identified three passsages in carefully scripted columns: (1.) Lk 2, 21 concerning the Circumcision and naming of Jesus; (2.) Rom 1, 2-5 announcing Jesus Christ “descended from David according to the flesh and designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit;” and (3.) Jn 11, 45-46 concerning the faith and disbelief of the Jews at the raising of Lazarus. The passages selected are obviously not a sequence of readings but a selection of key texts chosen for their concern with the human ancestry and divine mission of Christ.35 The erudite nature of this selection points to an academic context in which serious theological issues were being aired. The use of wood panels was common in schools. The use of the Aramaic language indicates that we are dealing with a Christian community of Palestinian origin who were intent on preserving their ethnic heritage. Egypt was always cosmopolitan. Desreumaux dated the Aramaic palaeography to ca. 600, shortly after which the school texts were covered with a coat of lead white to prepare

the panel for a second use as a painting. The replacement of text with image is a highly suggestive transformation and encourages close examination of the image in question and the context of its use. The figure of Fortuna-Tyche is complete down almost to her knees, measuring 37 cm., so the whole figure would have been about 47 cm. (Figure 10 Fortuna “Kal Anthousa”ca. AD 600, Reconstruction by T. Mathews of templon fitting.) Beside her is written the Greek title, “Anthousa,” or the Flowering One, which is the title ascribed to her by Constantine the Great when he named her the protectress of his new capital Constantinople in 331.36 The title is accompanied by the adjective “kale,” meaning good or blessed, making it an invocation as if to say “may the goddess of luck be good to us.” While Aramaic was the community’s language for scriptural study, demonstrating the community’s interest in preserving their ancient identity, the inscription of Fortuna’s name is in Greek because this was the community’s liturgical language, their church language. Palestinians remained “Orthodox,” referred to as Melchite, that is to say, they remained in communion with the church of Constantinople after the majority of Egyptian Christians parted doctrinally and administratively over the decision of the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Two little crosses precede the two words of the inscription, exactly like the crosses before the names of Christ and Aba Menas on their eighth century icon in the Louvre (in which the inscriptions are in Coptic). Inscriptions will be examined in Chapter Two, but it is important to discuss it here as this is the only inscription on the panels of the corpus that names the subject in the painting. The crosses in the inscription are significant. They are not mere decorations, nor are they punctuation marks; they are rubrics for veneration. When venerating an icon the Orthodox 38

IMMAGINE AGGIUNTA III_Ann Arbor_caption to be completed

on this panel but to them she belonged among the saints; she was “Saint” Anthousa. Rutschowscaya remarks how close is her Edfu visage to the Christian Virtues painted in the chapels of Saqqara.41 IMMAGINE AGGIUNTA III_Ann Arbor

are always expected to sign themselves with the cross. They made the sign before reciting the inscription. Fortuna has a long history. She was first of all a goddess of fertility as her Latin name implies (the root from fero, “I bear”), and in Etruscan Italy she was responsible for child-bearing and the bearing of fruit. In the Greek world she became the goddess of chance and luck where she was named “Tych ,” (the root from tynchano “I happen”). In Egypt she was commonly identified with Isis, as we will see below in the Chapel of the Syncretic Gods, Karanis. On the Louvre panel the staff in her upraised right may be the thyrsus, reflecting her fertility nature, or a spear as city protectress. She wears the aegis of Athena over her breast,and a city tower for her crown. She was invoked as protectress of Antioch, of whom Eutychides did his most famous statue in the third century BC,37 as well as of Alexandria, for whom Apelles painted her enthroned.38 Yet Constantine’s usage made her effectively a saint, for he placed her gilded statue atop the Column of the Goths on the point of the Acropolis, where she oversaw shipping traffic to the harbour of the Golden Horn.39 One must imagine the merchant captain setting sail from Alexandria with the blessing of Fortuna’s image – as in Edfu – and arriving in Constantinople under the blessing of her gold statue above the harbor. We are dealing with a cultic situation that spanned the Mediterranean and bridged pagan-to-Christian usage. A more precise clue of cultic use is found in the framing of the panel. The top edge of the panel is champfered to fit into the groove of a horizontal framing member, while the right edge lacks such a fitting and is bordered instead with a painted decoration of green and ochre palmettes. The fitting of the panel in a grooved frame above, but not at the sides, is typical of icon placement in a templon beam, where it must have been located at the right end of the beam. The templon is the architrave of the chancel barrier that separated the sanctuary area of a church from the lay congregation area, which in the sixth century began receiving icons.40 The Christian community in Edfu had a modest little church or chapel near the ancient temple where their worship involved icons around the sanctuary like those in Constantinople. The placement of Fortuna put her in the most sacred cultic part of the church, before the area reserved for the Eucharistic offering. The templon employment of icons is a usage well attested in Constantinople and Egypt in the sixth century, to which we will return (Chapter Six). The ancient syncretism by which Egyptian gods elided with the divinities of the Graeco-Roman pantheon was gradually superceded by a new syncretism which accommodated the divinities of the new Christian “pantheon,” starting as early as the second century (Chapter Four). Alongside Christ and Mary, a myriad of other celestial powers were soon ranged. We are uncertain what other name the Christians may have assigned to Tyche-Fortuna beyond the name of Anthousa inscribed 40

The Chapel of the Syncretic Gods, Karanis (Isis and Serapis Enthroned, Demeter with Kore, Fortuna/Isis, and Harpocrates Enthroned) Our trail of the panel paintings leads back to the Fayum, to Karanis on the north shore of Lake Moeris.42 As with other sites, it was chance papyrus finds by the diggers of the sebbakh fertilizer that first attracted archaeologists to the mound called Kom Aushin. From the papyri Grenfell and Hunt in 1895 promptly identified the site as Karanis, a town of about 2,500, having two smaller temples, one of which was dedicated to Soknebtynis. By the time the American Classicist Francis W. Kelsey surveyed the site a generation later in 1923 he found it had been extensively plundered by the papyrologists, whether professional or amateur, with the loss of much valuable archaeological evidence. The situation challenged Kelsey to re-evaluate archaeological priorities and to introduce more systematic methods. Placing non-literate documentation on a par with written records, he sought “the reconstruction of the environment of life in the Graeco-Roman period . . . [and the] increase of exact knowledge rather than the amassing of collections.”43 Kelsey had the town completely mapped and introduced a grid system for tracking the finds. Gradually Kelsey’s team collected and documented some 44,000 objects, eventually deposited at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, including some 3,500 textile fragments, plentiful ceramic, glass, and small sculptures. The papyri were counted separately. Though the first season was somewhat experimental, more exact records of find spots were introduced with drawings, extensive photographs, and even motion pictures. Kelsey’s initiative made Karanis into the most thoroughly documented residential site of the Late Antique world, with stores of information still to be tapped. The panel-paintings that emerged from the Karanis excavations were less significant than those of Tebtunis, but the congruence of the finds with the archaeology begins to yield a more integral picture of religious observances in Egypt, which is our present quest. The most important discovery of the Kelsey project was certainly the spectacular set of mural paintings of chamber 5046, for the prodigious amount of information it contained.44 The archaeologists named this the “Chapel of the Syncretic Pantheon.” Its discovery at the very outset of the excavations challenged the skills of an inexperienced team; documentation was limited to a few photographs and the careful watercolor renditions of the east and north walls by Hamzeh Carr, who 41

Horus (?) enthroned and Fortuna, Karanis House 5046, north wall, ca. 350 AD. Watercolor by Hamzeh Carr, Ann Arbor, MI., Kelsey Museum of Archaeology [Museum photo, Mathews has CD]

Kor with D m t r, and Isis with Serapis enthroned, with Cerberus, Karanis House 5046, east wall, ca. AD 350. Watercolor by Hamzeh Carr, Ann Arbor, MI., Kelsey Museum of Archaeology [Museum photo, CD in hand

was employed by the Cairo archaeological service in 1925. Hoping to preserve the murals, they removed them from the wall to the Cairo Egyptian Museum, but unhappily they did not survive this radical surgery. Not only did the murals disappear from sight, they also vanished from the written record. The first major publication of Karanis, by Boac and Peterson who assumed the direction of the excavations upon the passing of Kelsey in 1927, omitted all description or reproduction of the decorated chamber and of the Carr records of it. Instead, in the section they called “Wall Paintings” they limited themselves to the painting in B50 of Isis Nursing Harpocrates with an equestrian Heron, and the Harpocrates Enthroned in the granary of C65.45 The archaeology of Karanis was thus seriously skewed from the start. The Isis Nursing, tacitly assumed to be the prototype of the nursing Virgin Mary, became the most often reproduced find and a symbol of Karanis. Moreover, Boak and Peterson assured their readers that “the population seems to have been thoroughly Christianized by the beginning of the fourth century,” though they traced no archaeological record of the Christian presence. This bias still survives in Elaine Gazda’s

exhibition catalogue of 1983. The dating of the Chapel of the Syncretic Gods is based only on the dating of the architecture of the neighbourhood, which belongs to the late third and fourth century, roughly a century later than the Theadelphia Chapel of the Painted Niches. The Karanis Chapel of the Syncretic Gods is a generous room by domestic standards, about 6 meters on a side, with a surprising height. (Figure 11. Kor with Demeter and Isis with Serapis enthroned, and Cerberus, Karanis house 5046, east wall, ca. 350 AD; Watercolor by Hamzeh Carr, Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, Ann Arbor, MI,) (Figure 12, Horus enthroned (?) and Fortuna, Karanis house 5046, north wall, ca. 350 AD. Watercolor by Hamzeh Carr, Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, Ann Arbor, MI.) The painted figures, which are better than life size (2.5 meters tall including their crowns and haloes), stand above niches, placing their feet on a ground line, which is already about 2 meters from the floor, and in addition there is evidence of a small ventilation window above one figure, a common feature of Fayum architecture. The room, then, was about 5.5 meters high, with a circle of gods placed on high, above the line of the spectator’s vision. 42

In contrast to the Chapel of the Painted Niches, the murals here were painted on the flat walls of the chamber. Calling the program a “pantheon” raises expectations of an assembly of gods in some systematic order with some kind of “quorum” in attendance. The term also misleads by focusing attention on the identities rather than the activities of the gods in relation to the viewers, which is our chief concern. There is considerable evidence of the cult involved. First of all, it is clear from the groupings and variations in scale that the figures do not represent a file of divinities in hierarchy but sets of divinities, especially in twos, something we encountered in the Oratory of Four Gods in Tebtunis. As in the hanging of the two panel-paintings there, each with a pair of divinities, one can imagine that the commissioning of the paintings in this chapel went forward piecemeal as occasion or devotion should dictate. Only about half of the original decoration survived, chiefly on the east and north walls, but we know that the painting continued onto the south wall as well, where a single enthroned figure was detected but not recorded. As in Theadelphia, the principal god is enthroned in the middle of the

wall facing the visitor, who entered from the west. But here, instead of the father of the gods, it is the mother of the gods, Isis, who enjoyed the name theotokos, “who gives birth to the god(s).” Serapis, who often appears as her consort, is here pushed to the right in the corner and Isis is represented as the largest figure, at the center of this conclave of gods. Her cultic significance is further borne out by the placement of a bronze hook for hanging a lamp directly in front of her. Preserved up to her breast, Isis presented a grand figure. This marks a decisive shift in the construction of the pantheon. In the Iliad and Odyssey Homer left no doubt about the presidency of Zeus over the pantheon, and this was understood in the Chapel of the Painted Niches. In the re-organization of the celestial universe that takes place in the Fayum in Late Antiquity, a new prominence is given to Isis and to her child Harpocrates that alters the character of the divine-human dialogue. Her dress includes a blue and white striped under-tunic that reaches to the ground, a white over tunic trimmed in pearls, a broad cincture finishing in a fringed stole (a kind of palla contabulata with celestial symbols?) and a deep blue mantle over her shoulders. In her right hand she holds a thin staff or sceptre with a 43

Chapel of the Painted Niches of Theadelphia). We will find them again in a panel-painting from a domestic site in Karanis, below. The mother and daughter are primarily goddesses of plenty, responsible for the crops which fill the baskets they carry on their heads. In the Fayum one was never far from the agricultural economy of the nome. The excavations of Karanis discovered seventeen granaries of standard Roman design, used for the durum wheat, which was the basic export commodity. But the farms also produced a wide diversity of produce for local consumption: barley, lentils, olives, radishes, figs, peaches, walnuts and lentils.48 The lives of the residents were timed with the cycle of the crops—the rising tide in Lake Moeris, the flooding of the canal network, the planting, the flowering, the ripening, the harvesting. Women carrying baskets of fruit on their heads, exactly like the goddesses in the paintings, were the real-life measure of the success of the farms, and the richness of the blessings of the earth had to be referred to the generosity of D m t r and Kor . One expressed one’s gratitude by lighting lamps and torches in their honor, which is what the little putto is doing between them. Kor herself carries a lamp on a pole, which is usually the lamp her mother carried when searching for her in the underworld, and both have radiant haloes. Kor ’s is more legible, with rays of sparkling light emanating from an aura of yellow ochre. The rays, composed of dots, are very similar to, but twice as numerous as, the rays emanating from the haloes of Soknebtynis, Amun, and Heron in the Tebtunis oratory a century earlier. Clearly the artists are striving consciously for a brilliance that exceeds the matte finish of their medium. Beyond the fruitfulness of the earth, the two goddesses had other roles in everyday life. The youthful daughter Kor was a goddess of sexual desire, exposing the curves of her belly and hips, and wearing dark clothes to remind one of the joys of nights of desire. And like Isis and Serapis they also had special concern with the afterlife. The rose garland of the deceased floats above D m t r’s shoulder, and she carries another in her hand. And most remarkably D m t r carries a long staff carefully marked off at regular intervals as a measuring ruler. We will encounter this attribute in the hands of three more of the goddesses of our corpus. They are measuring the length of our lives. Turning further to the left, we encounter on the north wall another strong feminine presence, slender and erect and nearly nude in her close clinging garments. This goddess is identified as Fortuna by the cornucopia in her left arm and the remains of a rudder in her right hand. She is the fertility goddess we encountered in Edfu, drafted into the Christian pantheon. Identified as Tych , the goddess of good chance or luck, she wears expensive, rich-colored clothes bordered in pearls. Taking the syncretism a step further, the Egyptians gave her

golden snake bracelet on her wrist; in her left she holds a rose garland, a common offering for the dead. She sits on a great throne of panelled wood,46 draped with rich materials. Her prominence in the chapel is what sanctified the whole space and made it fitting for further sacred offerings. Her presence inspired the offering of the other divine images in her troupe. Serapis is of special importance in this study not only for his place in the Karanis chapel, but for his syncretism with Septimius Severus and Caracalla in the Berlin painting 31329 (Chapter Two) and for his pairing with Isis in the doors of their shrine in Malibu 74.AP.21-22 (Chapter Three). The smaller scale of Serapis here is a sign that the painter did Isis first on a generous scale leavingt less space for Serapis. However, the two are clearly a pair; their thrones share the same panelled design, perhaps enriched with figures, and they are both placed on the same base line, which is a pearl border above a kyma band. The calf length of his pearl-trimmed purple tunic declares the masculinity of Serapis. Their feet are positioned in exactly the same pose—one forward one back--like grand iconic statues in a temple. Isis and Serapis were frequently paired and they were worshipped above all in their grand, adjacent temples in Alexandria from Ptolemaic times, renovated under Septimius Severus and Caracalla.47 A real serpent encircles Serapis’ right forearm and his open hand gesture indicates that he has offered something to the monster on his right, Cerberus, the guardian of the realm of the dead from Greek mythology. He is shown in an iconography standard since the archaic Greek period as a three-headed dog with a mane of snakes. In Iliad VIII, 367 only Heracles had the strength to overpower Cerberus, but in the Aeneid VI the Sibyl overcame him by drugs mixed with honey and perhaps it is some drug that has been offered to pacify him here, as he looks up to the open hand of Serapis. Queen and King of the underworld they preside over the entrance to Hades, which one might imagine passes between their thrones. One must allow for a personal and human dimension in these votive paintings, which could stand either as thanks for, or petition for the safe passage of someone to his or her abode in next world. Besides commissioning and thus offering this painting to the gods, one could express one’s prayer in other gestures as well, leaving a rose garland with Isis, like the one she is holding, or lighting oil in the lamp installed before her. To the left of this august pair we find another pair of gods, the Eleusian mother and daughter D m t r and Kor . In a formal sense they are clearly a new painting installation. They are painted on a smaller scale, the kyma and pearl ground line has been abandoned for a simpler base line on a different level, and D m t r’s elbow overlaps Isis’ throne. Together the two figures occupy the same space that the single figure of Serapis occupies on the right. They were the best preserved figures in the chapel (as they were by chance the best preserved in the 44

The same season that they excavated the Chapel of the Syncretic Gods, the University of Michigan team discovered an important wooden panel-painting of another representation of Kor (Ann Arbor 28807). When they found the panel in chamber 5054A, the archaeologists at first called it a “panel portrait.” But it is a full-length female figure, so lightly clad, as to appear nude. The Kelsey Museum later revised their identification to Aphrodit . However, Muller and Rondot’s examination of the full complement of her attributes demonstrated that she is in fact Kor , whom we saw in the Chapel of the Syncretic Gods, the wife of Hades, daughter and double of D m t r.50 Rondot argues that D m t r was very likely shown accompanying her to the right in the missing portion of this panel.51 Kor wears a transparent veil over her torso and her dark underworld mantle, hanging on her left shoulder, has dropped to her knees exposing her curves. She carries an urn on her left shoulder to pour water for the crops. In addition she wears a garland of rose petals and a necklace of pearls with a coiled cobra pendant (very like the necklace of Isis lactans in Karanis 50). In the grain supplying province of the Fayum the Eleusian pair were very popular. There are two very significant circumstances about the find of Kor . In the first place, along with the painting, there was found a second painted panel, field number 24-5054A-D, described in field notes as “Frag. of larger portrait? or painted box.” Unfortunately this second piece was in such poor condition that it was not kept or photographed (record keeping being rather unsystematic in the first year of the excavation). Since the Kor is 30cm. high, the “larger” painting would have been close to the size of the Rubensohn finds at Tebtunis, not likely part of a painted box. As in Rubensohn’s discovery, the find of two panels together seems to indicate that we are dealing with another domestic oratory in which one panel somehow attracts another. The placement of the first panel sanctified the locus making it appropriate for the placement of other religious panels, even if, as in the Tebtunis oratory, we cannot define the precise theological relationships between the figures in the two images. The second significant circumstance is its location, for the report showed that the Kor panel was discovered in a niche in the east wall of the room (field number 24-5054A-A). Although photographs and plans of the niche were rendered impossible by the collapse of the roof timbers into this room, it is evident that when the house was abandoned in the late fourth century the painting was not taken but had been left where it belonged, just as Rubensohn’s panel had been left hanging from a peg in the wall. Thus we have another instance of the precise cultic situation for a panel. The niche is significant. Among the Romans it was commonly assumed that figures of gods belonged in niches or apses, as can be documented even in Palmyra, though the niches there are

a knotted mantle over her breast, as here, and interpreted her as another manifestation of Isis who was also guardian of shipping, whether riding on a ship’s prow or steering its rudder. But here again reference is made to the goddesses’ role in the other world. Spouse of Osiris, Isis was guardian of his corpse and responsible for his resurrection and hence a special goddess of the dead. On either side of her the painter has placed miniature Apis bulls; besides being offspring of Isis the cow, Apis was a special protector of the dead. Before the Apis bulls the painter has placed incense altars, such as those that were found in abundance in Karanis. One therefore had many reasons for thanking so polyvalent a goddess and in the foreground a putto rushes toward her with a lighted torch, as her devotees were expected to do in the chapel, whether lighting lamps or incense altars. Repeatedly the concrete referents of the paintings remind us of the correspondence of the paintings with the actual cult practices that surrounded them. To the left of the Fortuna group there appears another grouping, whose deterioration left many problems of interpretation. On a miniature scale one recognizes an infant Harpocrat s with his finger to his lips, the patron of children and family life, but beyond him is an adult enthroned male figure whom Mary Vokes identified as an adult Harpocrat s.49 His throne is similar to those of Isis and Serapis but it is raised up evidently on a set of steps. Further to the left a mysterious figure turns toward him in an unusual three-quarter pose to offer a cup. In spite of regrettable losses, the Chapel of the Syncretic Gods was an imposing cult site. The placement of the series of larger-than-life divinities in a kind of “clerestorey” zone high on the walls, where they enjoyed the lamplights and the clouds of incense ascending from below, must have made a moving impression. The temples of the Fayum preserve no decoration of this kind, and indeed the compositions are very un-Egyptian in their bold frontality. The scenes are not narrative but iconic. The usual themes of Egyptian temple decoration—the narratives of the ancient myths of the gods and the emblematic scenes of Pharaohs or priests presenting ritual offerings--these never intrude on the program. This neighbourhood chapel was a very different kind of place of cult, responding to the needs of individual members of the community. The “program,” was very disjointed. It did not attempt a “pantheon” but was assembled by a succession of separate paintings that offered thanks for (and petitions for) the prosperity of their fields, the fertility of their wives, their health, and their hopes for security in the world to come. It is not didactic or instructional but cultic, meant to address and stay in contact with the gods who governed human life.

THE KARANIS ORATORY OF D M T R AND KOR , AND THE USE OF CULTIC NICHES

Decorated niche ﬂanked with ﬁttings for lamps, ca. AD 200. Karanis House C119. Photo 1932, Ann Arbor, MI., Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. [Museum photo.]

Plan of the Palmyrene Gate of Dura Europus, 156-265 AD, plan by M. Pillet in Rostovseff and Baur 1931, pl. II. [Image from book]

We have already noted the use of niches in the Chapel of the Painted Niches in Theadelphia in which nine symmetrically placed niches housed painted images of the gods. In an excellent dissertation (alas, unpublished) on the cultic finds of Karanis, Herman O.A. Keinath reviewed at some length the evidence of the religious uses of niches in the domestic architecture of the Fayum, contesting Rubensohn’s earlier “decorative” interpretation of his painting finds.56 This has been followed more recently by a master’s thesis (also unpublished) by Heather C. Gottry dealing with niches, altars and incense burners in Karanis.57 Gottry takes the niches as her point of departure, emphasizing their Hellenistic design and their absence in pre-Ptolemaic Egypt. At the same time she distinguishes them from the Roman lararia with which they had been compared. Roman lararia were generally located in atria and kitchens, where they honored the lesser divinities entrusted with the protection of the household supplies. Gottry distinguishes twenty-one cultic niches in Karanis, and they show a much greater variety of placement than the Roman niches. Most significantly, several of the niches have divinities painted directly in them, showing a wider choice of deities than their counterparts in Roman lararia. The original publications of Karanis by Boak and Peterson regrettably skipped the fragmentary evidence of the wall paintings, with the unfortunate result that the Karanis paintings are entirely omitted from more general studies of Late Roman art.58 But while the Karanis paintings are fragmentary, their cumulative evidence tells us something concerning the religious life of the people. In a brief un-published thesis Mary Vokes surveyed some twenty Karanis buildings that had wall paintings, (some hardly legible), among which she found eight instances of niches with paintings in or around them.59 Half of the niches contained representations of deities, the most interesting being two of Harpocrates, since two of our panel-paintings also have figures of that famous childhood manifestation of Horus (Cairo JE 31568 and London BM 1891.4-23,1). One might be justified in inferring then that the same religious need could be served either by placing a panel-painting of the god in a niche or by painting that god directly on the wall itself within the niche – whether D m t r and Kor , or Harpocrat s, or another divinity. Moreover, the paintings that surround the niches often show accompanying gods (like a Serapis in one instance) along with a multiplication of cultic objects that witness the uses of the niches. Two Domestic Panel-paintings in Karanis: An Eagle of Apotheosis and a Male God Two other fragmentary finds augment the documentation of panel-paintings from the domestic zone of Karanis. The first (Ann Arbor 23976), 27.8 by 8.7 cm., has the fitting for a frame visible along the bottom edge, like many of our corpus panels. Its darkened condition presented archaeologists with pro-

usually rectangular. Beat Brenk has recently followed the development of cultic niches from Roman architecture into their sequel in Christian architecture, in which of course the apse of the church generally takes the form of a large niche, with a semicircular plan and a half-spherical vault.52 Unfortunately Brenk omits the Egyptian material. The Islamic mihrab is also a related niche usage. In his study of the lararia of Roman houses, Orr defined the niche as “a temple in miniature.”53 The question is whether the same was true of niches in Egypt. Niches are the commonest domestic “furniture” in the Late Antique houses of Egypt, as we have seen in Theadelphia and Karanis, and their use was to continue through to the domestic architecture of early monasticism at Kellia in the desert just north of the Fayum.54 In the absence of closets or chests of drawers, niches served common storage purposes as cupboards, some of them provided with wooden shelves, though, as Rubensohn observed, they were never equipped with doors. In addition, certain of the niches are given special treatment with a semicircular plan (less useful for storage since it is less spacious than a rectangular plan) and they are singled out with arched tops or shell hoods, or decorated with flanking colonnettes, relief work, or mural paintings, calling attention to whatever was placed there. Often a niche that is so distinguished is also placed in the symmetrical center of the wall. In some cases it is even flanked with provision for fixing of lamps, as in Karanis House C119.55 (Figure 13, Decorated niche with fittings for lamps, ca. AD 200. Karanis House C 119; Photo of 1932. Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, Ann Arbor MI.) In the Christian hermitages of Kellia, a prayer niche is the chief marker of a chapel. 46

blems in reading it correctly and it was interpreted by Margaret Cool Root as the loosely falling hair of a woman seen from the side.60 Inspection by Rondot and Muller, however, determined that it is not hair but feathers, representing an eagle spreading its wings, with a gold bulla suspended on a ribbon about its neck and perhaps a dagger in its claws.61 Rondot interprets the eagle as part of an apotheosis composition, by comparison with an apotheosis in a mural painting in the temple of the neighbouring town of Magola (Rondot doc. 34). The god or gods who were born aloft by the eagle rode on the back of the eagle in Magola. This iconography has important implications. The eagle is not found in ancient Egypt, but is a Greek element: the eagle is Zeus’ bird, which is then assumed in Roman times as an imperial symbol. Its most important use in Late Antique Egypt is in Diocletian’s Imperial Chamber of Luxor (AD 301) where the eagle spreads his wings in the central niche over the deified Tetrarchs (FIG). Thomas has reviewed its continued Christian use in Egypt in a funerary context, in which, according to Maximus of Turin, it represents “Christ who takes the Christian captive to the heavens, as the eagle carries its prey.”62 In addition to the funerary stelae illustrated by Thomas,63 one might note how the eagle in the Chapel 27 of Bawit spreads its wings to carry aloft monograms referring to the Trinity.64 The provenance of the Karanis panel in House B40-F indicates a date from mid first to mid second century. The second of the documented Karanis panel-painting fragments (Ann Arbor 15975), was a piece discovered in 1926, in house B2W, measuring 16.5 by 13.3 cm.65 The deteriorated fragment shows only the top and right side of a head, evidently a male god. The fitting along the top edge for a frame distinguishes it from the Fayum mummy portraits, with which it was at first confused. Coins from the structure were dated from mid-first to mid-second century and Kelsey dated the painting fragment stylistically to the first half of the second century. The precise cultic situation of this fragmentary find is unknown; however, it is significant because it adds an item to the domestic employment of the panel-paintings of our corpus, reinforcing the consistency of private cult.

leucid and then the Roman Empire. Its excavation brought to light a rich array of temples and chapels representing the whole spectrum of religious observances of Late Antiquity, including a spectacular synagogue and the earliest Christian church building, both decorated with mural paintings. The little wooden door panel of Nik or Victory (New Haven1929.288), from the moment of its discovery in 1928 by M. I. Rostoftzeff and P.V.C. Bauer, was interpreted against the background of the discoveries being made at the same time in Egypt.66 On their side, Egyptologists have turned to this archaeological fragment for assistance in explaining the pintel-hinged panelpaintings found in the Fayum. The Graeco-Roman world included both the Nile and the Euphrates, and the Dura data sheds light on both sides. The archaeological information reported with the discovery site is more copious than that accompanying any of the Egyptian door-panels (all of which are simply undocumented), but it has not been closely observed. The Palmyrene Gate defended the principal entry to Dura-Europus from the west at the beginning of the main east-west artery of the city, and the painting was found on the ground floor of the north tower of the gate. (Figure 14, Plan of the Palmyrene Gate of Dura Europus, 156-265 AD. Plan by M. Pillet in Rostovseff and Baur 1932; pl. II.) Following an earthquake in 160 AD it had been decided to subdivide the two chambers of the ground floor to reduce the span for the ceiling beams above. Two successive sets of great wooden doors closed the west gate of the city, and the inner court, behind the second set of doors, became a locus sacred to Tych , protectress goddess of the city, a kind of informal chapel. Three altars for the offering of incense were found in

THE DURA EUROPUS SHRINE TO TYCH : A DOOR-PANEL OF NIK While these excavations of the Fayum were in progress, British troops in Syria discovered in 1920 a site which quickly stole the archaeological headlines and attracted a French-American collaboration of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres and Yale University, 1922-39. Dura Europus on the Euphrates was founded (like Alexandria) in the wake of the conquests of Alexander the Great and served as border outpost of the Se47

Nike Carrying Crown, 156-265 AD. Reconstruction painting by Lois North. Yale University Art Gallery, no. 1929.228, New Haven CT. [Museum photo.] Nike Carrying Crown, 156-265 AD. Reconstruction painting by Lois North. Yale University Art Gallery, no. 1929.228, New Haven CT. [Museum photo.]

this court, one with a roughly scratched image of Tych .67 A mass of inscriptions to her were also found, both invocations of her protection and expressions of thanks for deliverance through her. Passing here on their way to or from duty on the front, the soldiers were moved to invoke Tych , their divine protectress. Similar inscriptions continued further into the adjacent room H in the north tower of the gate, and it is in this room that was found the painted wooden panel of Victory as well as “a small niche which seems to have contained a shrine.” 68 (Figure 15. Victory offering a Crown, 156-165 AD. Reconstruction painting by Lois North, Yale University Art Gallery, no. 1929.228. New Haven CT.) Both the niche and the little door panel are cultic appurtenances--we have seen in Karanis that niches of semicircular plan were often intended for cult images. But one must resist the temptation to reconstruct the panel as a door for the niche. No fittings for doors were reported in the niche. The width of the panel at 12 cm. would be quite inadequate to the niche’s span of 50 cm., and the door’s rectangular shape does not match the arched profile of the niche. Rostovtzeff and Baur proposed rather that the door belonged to a little box-like shrine, commonly called a naiskos, intended to house a statuette of the god in Egyptian usage. In such shrines the gods acquired mobility, being carried by porters from the god’s temple or chapel to visit his or her clients in their own quarters of the city (Chapter Three). Opening the doors, the priest would bring out the statuette of the divinity for veneration, which consisted in anointing, dressing, and feeding the image, and addressing it in prayer and song. The most important evidence supporting the naiskos interpretation of the Dura Europus door panel is its measurements which have not been noticed before. The door is not actually rectangular but trapezoidal, being a couple of centimeters narrower at the top than at the bottom. A trapezoid is the traditional profile of surviving examples of the naiskos shrines in Egypt, and the best parallel for this is the pair of door panels of Isis and Serapis in Malibu (75.AP.21 and 22), which did not come to light until 1974. We will return to this material in connection with the origins of the triptych. The slender goddess in the panel balances on a globe and turns toward the hinge side of the panel to offer a crown of laurel in her right hand. While her gesture moves to the right, her shoulders and her face turn directly toward the viewer in the manner of most of the other gods in the panel-paintings of Egypt. The execution was in bright colors: blue, green and orpiment against a bright red background. Discussion of the god’s statue that inhabited this naiskos shrine is necessarily speculative, but the most natural candidate would have been the Tych of Dura, who was invoked in so many inscriptions in the city gate. The excavators suggest the further possibilities of a Syrian god, such as Haddad or Atarga-

tis, or even an image of the emperor (which was the fashion of archaeologists in the 1920’s). Cultic statuettes of the emperor, however, do not appear in the archaeological record and the eikonidion of Pap. Oxy.1449, cited by the author, refers to a small painting not a small statue, as we will see below. One may imagine then that the goddess of Victory on the door panel is hastening to crown the sculptural image of the city’s protectress Tych within the shrine, to the accompaniment of prayers and incense offerings by the soldiers who rallied at the principal gate of the city. A Panel of Soknebtynis and Min from the Temple of Tebtunis Following in chronological order the footsteps of the archaeologists in the Fayum, it is not until 1931 that we encounter the first panel that came from a genuine temple site (Alexandria 22978).69(Figure 16. Soknebtunis and Min (detail) GraecoRoman Museum Alexandria, no 22978; photo by N. Muller). (Figure 16 (2) Soknebtunis and Min, Graeco-Roman Museum, Alexandria 22978. Reconstruction drawing by Henri Choimet.)This is a painting from the grand Ptolemaic temple of Soknebtynis, the Nile god of the Fayum, showing the patron god of the Nile with an accompanying figure of Min the god of male sexuality. Found by Carlo Anti of the University of Padua, who unfortunately failed to identify the find spot with any precision or note any of the circumstances of its discovery. Rondot, who reviewed very thoroughly the excavation history of the temple, could say only that it was within the second court of the temenos in an area that had been given over to a glass-working atelier in late Ptolemaic times. The glass atelier Rondot locates inside the second gate, either to the north at 20D or to the south at 21A.70 The vagueness of the archaeologists makes the significance of this painting’s placement difficult to assess. To begin with, however, the painting is a virtual twin of Rubensohn’s painting of Soknebtynis and Amun, which we have seen was discovered in a precise domestic context in the same town. One must question whether the cultic use of this panel-painting in the temple was substantially different from its use in the home. The dimensions of the two are only a few centimetres apart, 59 by 54 cm. against 62.5 by 59.5 cm, for the Berlin panel. They both preserve their eight-point frame, and they both show a pair of gods with the same Soknebtynis, patron of the great temple, seated in the place of seniority on the left, bearing the same attributes of the sacred crocodile in his lap and a hooked sceptre in his right hand. Rondot has explained the theological appropriateness of pairing the Nile god Soknebtynis with synaoi theoi Amun and Min. Both of these alliances are mentioned in the Book of the Fayum. But notwithstanding the authority of the painting’s orthodox iconography, the painting is clearly not an integral part of the temple’s decorative system. Traditionally temple decoration was done in sunken 48

Soknebtunis and Min, Graeco-Roman Museum Alexandria, no. 22978. Photo by N. Muller [Muller photo.]

Equestrian Dioscurus, Cairo Egyptian Museum E87191. Photo by N. Muller [Muller photo.]

from its functioning in a domestic oratory in the same town. The god remained the same divine patron, who supplied the Nile water and the prosperity of the entire Fayum, to whom the crocodile was so important religiously that they went to the trouble of mummifying thousands of them for burial in the sanctified cemetery of the temple of Tebtunis. But as a personal god Soknebtynis was also seen as responsible for individual families within the region. The museological fate of the panel reflects the archaeologists’ uncertainty about it. Anti first sent it to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, but they apparently thought its subject not sufficiently “Egyptian,” or its date too late and they promptly shipped it off to the Graeco-Roman Museum of Alexandria. The panel paintings that were emerging one by one in the Fayum presented an unfamiliar information system that had not yet been deciphered. An Equestrian Dioscurus: Medinet Gouta Meanwhile, excavations continued to document panel paintings in domestic settings. In 1937-38 Ahmet Fahry Eff discovered in Medinet Gouta in the Fayum the handsome equestrian Dioscurus of the Cairo Egyptian Museum (E87191). (Figure 17. Equestrian Dioscurus, Cairo Egyptian Museum E87191.) The Dioscuri are of fairly common occurrence in

relief in registers directly on the limestone wall. Wood was often used for important items of temple furniture, such as the portable naos or shrines for a statues of the god. In fact a piece of such temple furniture was also uncovered in the same part of the temple as the painting of Soknebtynis and Min. It is a far more splendid work of art, executed in enamel and gilt over a wooden support, and it shows a traditional theme of temple decoration, namely the Pharoah and his wife paying their worship to the god.71 The contrast with the much more modest means displayed in the panel painting of Soknebtynis and Min argues that the latter is not part of the decoration of the temple itself but a private votive offering deposited in the temple. One might speculate that this section of the edifice retained some religious use after the abandonment of the rest of the temple, in a phase later than the glass workshop. We will return to the implications of “votive” offerings, but if identical paintings are being placed in home oratories and in temple precincts, one must reconstruct religious uses that would work equally well in both sites. One is likewise justified in asking whether at this point in the evolution of Egyptian religion the temple is not accommodating a popular religious usage from the domestic sphere rather than the reverse. In a corner of the god’s disused temple the religious functioning of a panel of the Soknebtynis panel need not have been different 52

the Fayum, already encountered in the Chapel of the Painted Niches of Theadelphia. The heroes commuted between this world and the next. Fahry reported very explicitly that the piece was found “in the ruins of houses of the Graeco-Roman period,” and that it was accompanied by various small cultic finds including “little stools and miniature fire altars,”72 details which Rondot missed.73 These cult finds are important here because the other two examples of the Dioscuri already discussed (Paris E 10815 and Oxford 1922.239) came without any archaeological context. However, the three panels are very close in composition and in size and the image was given wide circulation in the Alexandrian coinage of Trajan (113-14) and Hadrian (133-34), as remarked by Rondot.74 In other words, the situation is very like that which we have documented in the excavations of houses in Karanis; these images were being placed in domestic situations of cult. Though the plan of the house of Medinet Gouta was not published, inscriptions associated with the site gave a general date in late imperial times, that is the third century AD, but the painting may well be earlier. The Dioscuri were very popular and we remarked them as well in wall paintings in the Chapel of the Painted Niches in Theadelphia. Painting of a Goddess, North Saqqara Our investigation of the original cultic sites of our panel-paintings finds its very earliest example in the discovery credited to British archaeologist Geoffrey T. Martin of a little painting of a Mourning Goddess in North Saqqara (BM 1975.7-28.1). (Ref. Figure Intro, 2) Martin reported the find in a dump in Block B containing debris from domestic quarters thrown over the wall into the temple courtyard of Block B.75 The debris included diet remains, papyri, coins, clay seals, plant remains, wine amphorae and hundreds of fragments of glass and faience, including figurines of Thoueris, Isis, and Harpocrates. How a sacred object ended up in kitchen detritus is not explained by the archaeology, but by its scale and circumstances the piece was clearly not from temple furnishings but from domestic use in the quarters of the numerous attendant staff who occupied the apartments here. The inscription on the panel (discussed in the following chapter) reveals that the owner was Greek, of the elite ruling class who settled in Egypt after the conquest of Alexander the Great. The sophisticated quality of the painting was revealed in extensive analyses undertaken by the Department of Conservation and Scientific Research of the British Museum in 2007, which identifed the basic four-color palette of red and yellow ochres, vermillion, and Egyptian blue and referred the painting to the fourth century BC.76 This left unexplained the appearance of “gold” that runs in delicate threads through the woman’s garments and necklace and highlights on the throne. On my special request, Janet Ambers returned to the examination of these specific areas in 2011 and found that the light yellow 53

Equestrian Dioscurus, Cairo Egyptian Museum E87191. Photo by N. Muller [Muller photo.]

Isis from Kellis/Ismant el-Kharab in the Dakhleh Oasis (31/420-61/D/1/152) [Photo. Colin Hope.]

ochre was enhanced with a darker yellow of orpiment which, with its large crystals, produced the appearance of gold in the absence of the precious metal itself.77 The painting is unusual in showing no signs of framing. The top and bottom edges are certainly original and the paint surface goes right up to the edge with no margin for setting in a frame. But small panels did not require a frame for stability, as we will see in the following chapter when discussing the little sixth century BC Pitsa panels; they are without frames or painted borders. The left edge of the Saqqara panel is sawed and split rather irregularly, cutting through the inscription and the knees and the right hand of the figure, and the right edge too is broken off, taking the back of her throne. The inscription, discussed below, fits with the pattern of “ep’ agatho” dedications in other panels, though it is a full four hundred years earlier than other such inscriptions in our corpus. This is as close as we can get to Alexander the Great’s introduction of Greek painters into Egypt. The dedicant is Greek, perhaps someone on the temple staff of Saqqara, who offered the painting of the Greek goddess, perhaps in his own domestic oratory or in some chapel nearby. The transfer of Greek painting techniques and style was accompanied by the importation of the Greek religious custom of votive offerings. This painting demonstrates that phenomenon we have been documenting in Karanis and Tebtunis had a long history in Egypt. The goddess in a profile seated composition is as unEgyptian as one can get, and her throne can be matched in the royal tombs of Macedonia. Her head is slightly inclined forward as if in mourning and her loose tresses flow informally over her breasts, she wears a turban and she holds a measuring staff like the one held by Nemesis in Copenhagen 685.78 The Mourning Goddess of Saqqara presents us with the earliest evidence of the Greek technology of panel-painting in Egypt in a delicate realization of the human figure with no trace of native Egyptian painting style. At the same time it confronts us with astonishing longevity of the custom of the votive offering of panel paintings. The custom reached Egypt as soon as the Greeks arrived, to remain entrenched for over a millennium through the Fortuna of Edfu and beyond. Evidence from Constantinople confirms its continued currency long into the Middle Ages, as we will see. Isis, from theTemple of Tutu, Kellis/Ismant el-Kharab The discovery of panel-paintings can be expected to continue as long as excavations in Egypt continue. Rondot mentions finds of two more in 1999-2000 by A. Lajtar of the Polish Archaeological Mission in Deir el-Bahari, which still remain unpublished.79 The most recent published find, however, is that of Colin Hope in the Dakhleh Oasis of the Western Desert in his excavations of the Temple of Tutu in Kellis, Ismant elKharab (31/420-6-1/D/1/152). Discovered in 1992, the little 54

panel of Isis was published by Helen Whitehouse in1994.80 (Figure 19. Isis from Kellis/Ismant el-Kharab in the Dakhleh Oasis (31/420-6-1D/1/152.) Measuring 18 cm. high, the panel is the smallest in our corpus, though originally another figure probably accompanied the figure of Isis to the right. The reserved border on the top and bottom is evidence of the attachment of frames. Whitehouse has reported that it was found in the northwest corner of Room 3 of the Main Temple of Tutu where it was lying face upwards in earth-fill that accumulated in the mid-fourth century, the site being abandoned later in the same century. This is not exactly the way one would expect a votive offering to be placed but it might be a sign of negligent house-keeping in absence of regular staff. Whitehouse cites papyrus evidence naming a priest of Tutu as late as AD 335, but what his responsibilities were in the temple is not known. The painting, however, must have been somewhat earlier. The more youthful appearance of the goddess and the “more authentically Egyptian manner of dressing the hair over the top of the head” prompted Whitehouse to date the panel earlier than the mature and plump Roman style of the Isis of Malibu (but the conservation staff of the J. Paul Getty Museum more recently reports carbon dating in the first century AD for their panel). Its lack of connection with the temple leads one to agree with Whitehouse that the painting may have had earlier votive use in a domestic situation before being brought as a votive to the temple. But as in the case of the deposit of Soknebtynis and Min in the abandoned temple of Tebtunis, this Isis may have been left as a personal offering after official cult had ceased. In the Roman world the placing of votives did not require the participation of priests. Because of their consecrated status, temples evidently remained sacred even in their decline, in which one could continue informal religious observances toward the same or new gods. The archaeological reporting on contexts of the discovery of panel-paintings in Egypt is uneven and full of gaps, but wherever the original reporting has been sufficiently exact we have found clear evidence of the religious uses surrounding the paintings. This is not surprising, in view of the fact that their subjects are universally religious; the secular realm is well represented by the paintings of the large corpus of mummy portraits, depicting the elite ruling class who were responsible for commissioning these religious paintings. For the larger realm of realia of Egyptian life in Late Antiquity, one may also turn to the rich remains of textiles. The place of the panelpaintings in the celebration of religious rites and ceremonies will be documented further in sources both graphic and literary in the following chapter.

CHAPTERTWO VOTIVE PANEL-PAINTINGS IN THE PRIMARY SOURCES

If only the paintings would speak! From the silent witness of archaeology we have made some limited inferences about the conduct of the religious cults surrounding the panelpaintings. Picking our way among the chapels, oratories, and niches, examining the incense altars and the fittings for lamps, reading the allusions to the rites in the images themselves, we can imagine the ceremonies that went with these paintings. Over and above the archaeology, however, the paintings do actually have a speaking voice. In the concise inscriptions entered in four of the paintings we can hear the dedicants expressing their intentions. This is neglected primary documentation of a most important sort, for inscriptions in antiquity were meant to be read aloud and recent literary criticism has identified a variety of “voices” speaking to us from inscriptions.1 Another neglected primary source, which is very specific concerning the use of panelpaintings as votives in temples, is not an inscription, but a papyrus list of offerings (Pap. Oxy. 1449). While well known, it has never been properly understood, and it documents the rites associated with the single most famous painting in our study, the Berlin portrait of Septimius Severus and Family. This papyrus supplies a wealth of information about the practice of votive offerings at the highest level of temple observance in Egypt. Further, in the company of these sources we would like to insert a third source, namely excerpts from Roman mural paintings in a category called “sacral idyllic landscapes,” which illustrate precisely the religious rites that we are trying to understand. Though the mural documentation is from Rome and Campania, it is contemporary with our panels and offers vivid witness to the variety and flexibility of the religious rites in the first century AD. In this way, pulling together documentation from a variety of social strata we find a more complete profile of what this votive practice meant in the Late Antique World. In later chapters we will broaden our circle of written sources to include historical accounts, lives of saints, legends, and theological tracts (Chapters Five to Seven). While ancient literature lacks any comprehensive treatment of the religious rites associated with paintings, the many incidental notices taken together are in fact more abun56

dant than has been previously acknowledged. The diversity of information turns out to be consonant and confirmatory and sources on both sides of the pagan-Christian divide seem in agreement. Surprisingly, some of the most explicit written sources have been completely bypassed in scholarship dealing with art or with religion in Late Antiquity. The primary documentation with which we begin, namely the panels’ own inscriptions, has not been investigated in its religious context. Rondot offered translations of inscriptions on the corpus panels and mentioned their epigraphy as a clue for dating, but their religious implications he bypassed because he regarded the practice as foreign to the Egyptian culture that he was pursuing. This, however, is exactly what recommends the inscriptions to our attention: they attest a religious practice that is far more extensive than the valley of the Nile. We have already examined the inscriptions on the Fortuna Anthousa panel from Edfu (Paris AF 10878-9) for evidence about the immigrant Palestinian community to which the painting belonged (the Aramaic scriptural passages) and for the character the goddess being venerated (the Greek inscription of her title). Her probable placement on the templon barrier of a chapel is a Christian usage and the interest in naming the “goddess” reflects a common Christian preoccupation with fixing the identity of the subjects of the paintings, of which we will see further examples. The Edfu inscriptions, however, are unique; the other inscribed panels in the corpus, never name the divinities represented in the paintings. A modern museum-going public expects inscriptions to work like labels in an art gallery, supplying the artist’s name, the subject of the painting, and the date, but that was not the purpose of the texts inscribed on the panel-paintings. The inscriptions are all in Greek, and even the single un-deciphered inscription of Oxford1922.237 is in legible Greek syllables, perhaps of magical meaning. Greek was the administrative and religious language of the country from Ptolemaic times, so thoroughly that, as Bowman points out, “no monarch until the last, Cleopatra VII, learned to speak Egyptian.”2 Obviously, the use of Greek for all the inscriptions is evidence of the Hellenic, non-Egyptian, origin of 57

The Offering of Ethelonch , Pitsa Panel A, sixth century BC. Athens, National Museum, no. xxxx. [Museum photo.]

the cultic rites being observed in dedicating the panels. Apart from the Christian Edfu inscriptions, four panel-paintings with inscriptions fit into a familiar format of pagan Greek dedications. These are essential, primary evidence concerning the paintings and the people who dedicated them. They are very personal documentation. The fact that most of the painted panels under study here are without inscriptions may seem puzzling to a modern, but in the archaeological world at large it is generally rare that finds come with inscriptions. The lack of inscriptions on our panels may also be partially attributable to the loss of their frames, for the frame was the preferred location for versified dedicatory inscriptions on ancient Greek paintings, both pagan and Christian, and a great many frame inscriptions were copied down for their literary value and have survived in the Greek Anthology, even though the paintings themselves are long lost. On the other hand, the frames that survive on our panels (Alexandria 22978, Berlin 15978, Brussels E 7409, Providence 59.030, and the fragment Tebtynis 230) (Figure Tebtunis Fragment 230, photo by N. Muller) are without traces of inscriptions and the four dedicatory inscriptions which we do have are entered on the background field surrounding the figure. Be that as it may, one cannot overlook the widespread illiteracy of the population especially outside the metropolis of Alexandria; furthermore one must keep in mind the progressive decline in the priestly ranks that ought to have been entrusted with looking after the religious records. To enter an inscription one had to be able to afford a scribe.

it is best translated in English as a perfect, since it expresses a past action with enduring effect – “so-and-so has offered this (and it remains permanently offered).”5 Since the verb anatith mi is the commonest word in the votive formula it is also the most easily omitted, as in our panels. One detail ignored by Rouse deserves to be noticed, and that is the frequent reference to the thing offered by a first personal pronoun: “So-and-so has dedicated me.” This is worth noticing because it affects the tone of the inscription in the human-divine dialogue that is taking place. The inscriptions can have a dry, legalistic ring to them, as just setting down facts for a record; when the personal pronoun is added, the object dedicated, whether statue, or painting, is heard to be speaking and testifying to the beholder on behalf of the dedicant, witnessing the fulfilment of his religious duty.6 This is exactly the way H rondas and Callimachos understood the witness of the dedicated object, as we will see. The third element is the name of the god or goddess to whom the offering or adoration is made, and it is put in the dative, for example: “to the Nymphs.” However, the accompanying representation of the gods in the image which is being dedicated usually made it superfluous to name them; the reader could be expected to understand that the image of Aphrodit was being offered to Aphrodit , in her honor. In some cases the entire construction is re-cast, replacing the active verb with a noun of offering in the nominative, such as proskyn ma, meaning “the worship.” In this construction the god is put in an objective genitive, to be construed as “This is the worship of (or to) the god Aphrodit .” The fourth element of the dedicatory formula gives a reason for the offering in a very general expression: ep’eucharistion “to offer thanks,” or ep’ euch “to offer a prayer, or wish.” But the commonest expression is the phrase ep’agath , which has become the current name for this dedicatory formula. This phrase is an abbreviated prayer that can refer both to blessings received and to blessings hoped for. To preserve this ambiguity I it translate “for a benefit.” An alternate formula used with similar meaning is en tych , “for good fortune.” At the close, the dedicant might also include mention of others whom he wants to remember in his prayer, simply with the preposition hyper, “on behalf of.” When Apollonios, son of Alexander, offered his adoration to Isis at Philae on the upper Nile in late imperial times he did it as well for his wife and children, his brothers, and their children and he expressed it in this grammatical construction. If the offering were made to fulfil a formal vow previously made to the god, it became a “votive offering” in the literal sense of that term, and this might be expressed by the phrase ep-orkon, “according to a vow.” The obligation of fulfilling a vow was taken so seriously that its onus was believed to descend to the next generation, so that a son would feel obliged to offer

THE EP’ AGATH FORMULA The four dedicatory inscriptions fit a very traditional form, known as the ep’ agath formula, found in countless examples in the Graeco-Roman world. The formula is simple and its familiarity allowed the writer to be radically elliptical without sacrificing clarity. The understanding of the text rested on the familiarity of its syntax. In his pioneering treatment of the votive phenomenon, W.H.D. Rouse examined the language of votive dedications.3 Four elements are involved in a full dedication. The overall governing grammar takes the form of a declarative sentence naming the dedicant as the subject in the nominative case, often with an identifying, proper title. The verb of dedicating is the second element in the simple sentence, yielding: “soand-so has dedicated, or offered this.” The canonical verb for dedicating is anatith mi, which in its root etymological sense means “to put on, or put up” but from its repeated use in dedicatory contexts it came to mean “to set up as a votive gift, to offer, or to dedicate.”4 The indicative is the mood for recording facts, and the aorist tense is commonly used, but 58

a dedication promised but unfulfilled by his father. A date might even be appended to the dedication, according to the regnal year of the emperor. The dedicant wanted his offering to go on record, and if it were offered in a temple the priestly staff had to list the dedication on their records, as we will see in the record of the imperial dedication. The association of picture and inscription provide a graphic and even touching “real-life” dimension to the religious rite. The very earliest surviving example of panel-paintings, the Pitsa fragments from the Peloponnesus, now in the Athens Archaeological Museum, offer a vivid introduction to the personal phenomenon of the dedicatory inscription.(Chap. Two, Figure 1, Pitsa Panel A, Offering of Ethelonch ) The proximity of Pitsa to Sykion, which supplied Alexandria with its first contingents of Greek painters, gives the material a special pertinence. In a cave sacred to the Nymphs, in the mountains just west of Corinth, Anastasios K. Orlandos reported in 1934 the remains of four small panel paintings among a numerous collection of small scale sculptural votive offerings.7 These four paintings of Pitsa, instead of showing the divinities toward whom the offerings were directed (as in the votive paintings of our corpus) illustrate the ritual offering itself. This is common to a large group of marble relief votive panels of the sixth and fifth centuries BC from the Acropolis in Athens (see the immediately following relief of The Offering of Antimedon the Wagoneer). As paintings the Pitsa panels offer important precedents for the “sacral idyllic” landscapes of Roman painting, to which we will turn below. The best preserved of the paintings, Pitsa Panel A, is a light board of horizontal format 15 x 30 x .5 cm. with no frame. The narrative is a sacrifice. Four women, all named in the inscription, wear the wreaths customary in religious rites and approach towards an altar at the right, accompanied by three servant boys, one leading a sheep and two playing lyre and flute. The women are graduated in size, and one assumes in age, the last and tallest being distinguished from the others by her purple himation. One might surmise that she is the mother and her three daughters precede her, the smallest and

youngest, Ethelonch by name, being the principal actor in the ritual. She, in first place, carries the necessities of the rite on a platter on her head, and with her right hand she pours a libation from a ewer or oinochoos onto an altar. The women who follow carry leafy branches tied with ribbons which they hold on high in a gesture of veneration. The intention of the painting is spelled out in the inscription in the background in Corinthian epigraphy which names the women and records the event, [an]eth ke tais Nun[phais], that is “(Ethelonche) has made a dedication to the Nymphs.” The inscription uses the verb traditional in votive offerings, anatith mi, and the fact that the verb is in the singular means it is Ethelonch ’s personal offering, not the offering of the whole family. Further, since the Nymphs were patrons of fertility--and there are numerous pregnant figurines among the clay votives in the cave--one can assume that the occasion of the offering is thanks for the birth of a child. For Ethelonch , the offering of the painted panel with its inscription, was a way of commemorating permanently the rite she performed in her sacrifice of a sheep as thanks to the Nymphs.8 The epigraphy of the inscription in Corinthian letters and the style of the painting allowed Orlandos to date the panel to 540-530 BC. The rite was a joyous occasion to be completed with feasting on the offered lamb. The other panels are less well preserved, but it is significant that all show women making offerings to the Nymphs.9 Panels B and C of similar date were originally larger and in vertical format (15.2 x 9.3 and 19.3 x 12.8 cm.). Panel B shows three women moving to the right, carrying a textile offering, perhaps a cloak, embroidered with a feline. The women are preserved in only half of their height. The inscription on Panel C repeats the same aneth ke formula as panel A; it shows a very elegantly dressed woman (perhaps with a companion) offering a garland of blue flowers. The modesty of her offering contrasts with the richness of her attire. Panel D is similar in size and in its horizontal format to A, 15 x 32.3 cm. including a painted frame. The graceful style indicates a date around 500 BC. Only a quarter of the painted surface is 59

The Offering of Antimedon the Wagoneer, ﬁfth century BC. Athens, Acropolis Museum, no. xxxx [Museum photo.]

H r n and Lykourgos, ca. 200 AD. Brussels, Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, no. E 7409. [Muller photo. or Museum photo.] H r n and Lykourgos, ca. 200 AD. Brussels, Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, no. E 7409. [Muller photo. or Museum photo.]

panel. In Theadelphia we encountered a marble relief panel of Ascl pius and his daughter in the Chapel of the Painted Niches, but it had no inscription. Sacrifices were by their nature perishable, while the votive relief or painting was a more-or-less permanent record, and it could carry an inscription, as the Pitsa panels did. A poet of about the same date, Callimachos, remarks on the same custom in a facetious epigram again addressed to Ascl pius, which he composed for the frame of a painting: “You know well, Ascl pius, that you have already received what Akeson owed by the vow of his wife D modik . But lest you forget and ask a second time for your salary, this pinax declares that it will bear witness.”12 The sacrificial offering is thus commemorated in the painting and duly recorded in the accompanying inscription. This describes in a general way the votive context in which we must read the ep’agath inscriptions on our panels. The first two of our panels belonged to a set of three panels of the god H r n that came on the market together in Cairo in1938 and were seen and documented by Cumont as coming from the Nahman collection. Although their earlier provenance is not firm, the three dedications to H r n suggested association with the one known temple to that god in Theadelphia. The smallest of the three was acquired by Cumont himself and personally donated to the Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire of Brussels (H r n and Lykourgos, Brussels E 7409).13 (Chapter Two, Figure 3, H r n and Lykourgos, Brussels) It lacked an inscription, and we will consider it later, but its iconography is exactly reproduced in the Etampes H r n and Lycourgos panel which was acquired in Paris in 1953 by archaeologist Nicole Thierry.(Chapter Two, Figure 4, H r n and Lykourgos, Etampes) The same Paris sale was the source where the Rhode Island School of Design acquired their H r n and Nemesis (Providence 59.030).(Chapter Two, Figure 5, H r n and Nemesis) The inscriptions on the Etampes, and Providence panels are extraordinary because they seem to be by the same hand, according to Nachtergael. Not only is the calligraphy identical but the placement of the inscriptions is identical. To start with Etampes, although there is plenty of room in the panel, the scribe put the words directly beside the left ear of H r n. The scribe intended us (and the god) to read the words as if spoken by the dedicant to the god himself.14 While the god is offering incense from a patera onto a little fire altar set before the Serpent, the dedicant in effect is claiming that he has made his offering to him (very likely also incense) and the painting records this personal act of religion. The epigraphy has been dated by Nachtergael to the second century or the beginning of the third (thus contemporary with the offering of the Berlin Septimius Severus, below).15 It reads: Patheb(is) Erie s o ep’ agath . The inscription names the donor with his patronymic, in the

intact, but pigment stains in the wood allow us to trace three clusters of three women dancing with their hands on their hips. The dance was in fact the women’s offering. The offering of textiles is mentioned frequently in the Greek Anthology, and the most famous offering to Athena was the peplos carried in the annual Panathenaic procession. Flowers and garlands were by far the commonest cultic tribute in the ancient world. Within the genre of pinakes, the Pitsa panels stand quite isolated at the very beginning of the development of panel paintings, but as votive offerings they belong to a very large family of marble votive offerings well represented in the new Acropolis Museum in Athens, coming from the shrines that encircled the Parthenon. A single example will have to stand for the group, coming from the shrine of Ascl pius.10(Chapter Two, Figure 2,Offering of Antimedon) The wagoneer Antimedon owed Ascl pius his thanks for having saved him and his chariot from a landslide. The relief goes beyond the Pitsa panels by including the god himself, and this is common on the marble relief votives. Ascl pius, larger than life size, is accompanied by his wife and his daughter Hygeia. Antimedon leads his horses, which he is offering, and reaches out to touch the god himself. As on the Pitsa plaques, an inscription in the background field commemorates the happy occasion: “Having been guided and saved from the stones, Oh Ascl pius, Antimedon the wagoneer has offered this to you in the sacred precinct, to whom grant a blessing.” While acknowledging the god’s favour he concludes by asking a further blessing. The relief is part of a dialogue between the man and his god. The pattern of depositing such votives at sacred sites is also referred to in literary sources. For example, the playwright H rondas of the second half of the third century BC tells the story of how his humble heroine, in acknowledgement for a cure, offered a cock, the customary victim for Ascl pius.11 Her obligation to the god was absolved by the rite of the sacrifice, but in order to leave a more permanent record of her devotion she also deposited at the shrine an image of Hygeia, Ascl pius’ health-giving daughter, painted on a 60

H r n and Lykourgos, ca. 200 AD. Etampes, Collection Nicole Thierry. Photo. By N. Muller [Muller photo.]

nominative case, the verb of offering being understood, and it closes with the usual prayer formula. It should be translated “Pathevis son of Erieus is the one who [has offered this/me], for a benefit.” Pathevis is not otherwise known in the record; while his name is Egyptian his father’s name is Greek, a situation common in the racially mixed society of the Fayum. The same scribe seems to have entered the inscription on the Providence panel and he placed it in the very same position, beside the left ear of the god. Accepting that we are reading words of the same scribe, we may be reading words of the same dedicant. If in fact it was Pathevis who offered this second painting to H r n this would explain the fact that he felt he did not have to mention himself in his inscription but could offer the panel for a friend or relation. The dedicant does not give his own name but the name of a relative or friend for whom he made an offering: Hyper Panephrymmi , ep’ agath , “[This has been offered] on behalf of Panephrymmios, for a benefit.” Panephrymmios is a Greek name, but again he is otherwise unknown in the record. This leads to some interesting conclusions about painting in the Fayum. In the Rubenson domestic oratory in Tebtynis we found a pair of panel paintings of four gods by a single painter (haloes identical down to the last dot), probably offered by the same home-owner dedicant. On the other hand, in these Heron panels probably from Theadelphia, we seem to have a pair paintings finished by the same scribe, probably being offered by the same dedicant but executed by very different artists. If we set them side by side with the Brussels Heron and Lycourgos we have three artists working on the same subject in widely different styles. All three Herons have wide staring eyes, but the artist of Etampes produces a delicate, blushing boy Heron, with a minimal beard, his shading carefully graduated in a hatching technique; by contrast the Providence artist shades the planes of the face smoothly but defines rather harsh, blocky features (like the painter of Heron in Berlin 15979), and gives him a bushy, manly beard. The Brussels painter has still another manner, executing figures with a rough and excited abbreviation of the features. Still other painters turned to the same sacred subject in two mural paintings in the temple of Pneferos and Pétésuchos in Theadelphia, as reported by Rondot.16 Again one had an “ep’agatho” dedication (not noticed by Rondot), but even more remarkable are their colourful radiant haloes, to which we must return. The fragment of a panel in the Petrie Museum, London (U.C.16312) supplies a third dedicatory inscription.17 (Chap. Two, Figure 6, Crown of Sobek-Horus) The piece was found without archaeological context since Petrie described it very vaguely as a “fragment of painted board with wreath, eagle, etc.; possibly part of an imperial portrait, such as was placed in minor temples.”18 With the benefit of the close compara64

tive piece, Cairo, JE 31571b, Rondot and Muller were able to identify the bird emerging from behind the god’s wreathed head as a falcon, the bird of Horus, the god of the sky. Arguing from the Cairo comparison, Rondot reconstructs a syncretism of Horus with Sobek, who would have been attended by lesser military gods in two registers, making this one of the largest paintings in the corpus, over a meter high. Although the inscription counts only six letters in two lines, it contains important information. The first line follows a gentle upward curve to respect the placement of the gold crown on the god’s head and it reads dekan[os], “decurion.” The second line has only the letter p before a word break respecting the halo of the god. In Greek p is an impossible terminal letter unless it belongs to an expression such as ep’agath (or one of the variants we noted above). Dekanos is the equivalent of the Latin decurio, the title of a police officer in charge of ten men, as the term is attested in papyri of the 2nd c. BC – 1st c. AD.19 The proper name of the officer would probably have preceded his title, the result being: “[So-and-so] the dekanos [has offered this painting] for a benefit.” The dekanos belonged to the elite of the Roman administration of Egypt, and while not a very high official, he must have been someone of considerable importance in his town in the Fayum. This tells us something significant about the class of people making painted votive offerings. 65

H r n and Nemesis, ca. 200 AD. Providence RI, Rhode Island School of Design, 59.030 [Muller photo. or Museum photo.]

Crown of Sobek-Horus, ca. 200 AD. London, Petrie Museum, University College, no. 16312 Goddess in Mourning. 325 BC. British Museum, no. 1975, 7-28-1. [Museum photo.]

Interestingly enough, the title dekanos is still in use for the dedicant of a panel painting as late as the sixth century AD when an officer named Leo left his dedicatory inscription on an icon at the monastery at Sinai. In the sixth century AD dekanos was still a government officer but now much higher on the ladder, being a messenger in the personal service of the emperor.20 (Figure xxx) On the icon he is shown wearing the red shoes and the pearl trimmed mantle of a member of the court and he addresses his prayer to the military Saint Theodore. We might suppose he intended to thank him for his safe arrival on his mission to the desert outpost of Sinai. Finally, we may turn to the inscription found on the very earliest panel in our corpus (not discussed in Rondot), a profile view of an enthroned goddess, her head slightly bowed in sorrow, holding a staff in her right hand (BM 1975, 7-281). (Chap. Two, Figure 6 bis = Intro., Figure 2) The find of this panel, reported by Geoffrey Martin, we have already reviewed in the preceding chapter, remarking the extraordinary quality of the painting. The inscription consists of the final six letters of a Greek male proper name: . . .o d kl s, with spelling omissions indicated by superimposed dots before and after the delta. Obviously, this male name does not supply the name of the goddess in the panel, but must be the dedicant, and this would fit the pattern observed in our three ep’agath dedications. The most important element in the votive inscription was the dedicant’s name, that he might receive credit for having fulfilled his duty of thanks to the god or goddess. The staff held by the goddess is extremely interesting, for it is the cubit measure properly assigned to Nemesis in Copenhagen 685, but also borrowed by Isis in Malibu 74.AP.22. The gods had charge of measuring out the lives and fortunes of mankind. On this Saqqara panel, the downcast gaze of the goddess implies an occasion of mourning, very likely over the decease of a devotee. However few, these four dedicatory inscriptions on the panel paintings begin to open up a personal dimension in the material. In all four cases the surviving inscriptions indicate the private character of the commissions. Although in the Berlin Septimius Severus (Berlin 31329) we face a very official offering of a painting at the highest level of patronage, probably paid for by the local municipality, the custom of votive offerings was usually a private religious expression which reached Egypt from the wider Hellenic world. We have the names, some fragmentary, of four persons of Greek and Egyptian parentage, one with his occupation as chief of police. The votive offerings in Egypt are part of a cosmopolitan religious usage. The Widespread Practice of Votive Offerings This ancient religious custom which Rouse described has received a good deal of new attention in recent years as art 68

historians broaden their interests to include the anthropological and sociological dimensions of ancient art.21 The term “votive offering,” is broader than its literal sense as an offering made to fulfil a votum, or vow to the god, though it may include this.22 Votive offerings, according to Rouse, were primarily thank offerings, freely made as part of a system of give and take by which humans structured their personal relationships with the gods. The occasions for making these offerings were many. Rouse defines several situations, and in general they are moments when one perceived a special divine intervention in one’s affairs to which one felt one ought to respond. A bountiful harvest, a victory in battle or in the games, deliverance from disease or calamity, the birth of a child, election to office or reception of a a distinguished civic honour--these were the most important occasions in which one attributed one’s benefits to the gods’ special favour and wanted to mark the thauma, or miracle, in a visible way. Suetonius preserves the story of how Augustus “escaped danger during a night march on his Cantabrian expedition when a bolt of lightning flashed by his litter and killed the servant who was going before him carrying a torch.”23 Augustus’ response to the god’s miraculous protection was to consecrate an entire temple to Jupiter Tonans, the god of thunder and lightning on the Capitoline in Rome. The votive responses of ordinary citizens might take many less demonstrative forms. For a good harvest one might simply offer the first fruits; for a victory in the games one might offer one’s crown of olive or a golden version of the same; for success in battle some of the spoils of the victory. On all occasions, however, according to Rouse, “the most obvious offering of a grateful worshipper is the Image of the Patron Deity.”24 The custom of votive offering thus became one of the chief driving forces for the commissioning of artistic monuments in the ancient world, from entire temples, to life-size statuary posed on pedestals, to common clay figurines of the gods, which were deposited by the thousands in and around the temples. The Acropolis in Athens, between the propylaion and the west façade of the temple, was crowded with some three hundred statues offered as votives, generally with inscriptions on their bases. In her recent study of the evidence, Catherine Keesling concludes, “Votive statues dedicated in Greek sanctuaries had two distinct audiences: the recipient deity and visitors to the sanctuary who viewed the statue and read its inscription.”25 The inscription was regarded as the official record of the dedicant’s gift. Statuary was always the most esteemed representation of the god, but it was understandably expensive when cast in bronze and glided, or carved in marble. However, votives also included sculpture on a small scale or statuettes, in bronze or bone, and inexpensive clay figurines are very plentiful in the archaeological record. In addition, painted wooden panels

embraced a range of prices depending on size and materials (though one must remember that the painter of panels was the best paid artisan in Diocletian’s price code).26 All economic levels could thus make appropriate offerings to the gods. As Diane Harris concludes in her study of the treasures of the Parthenon and Erechtheion, “Rich and poor gave freely to Athena, of their own will, without constraint.”27 When the offerings were made at temples, as we will argue in the case of the Berlin Septimius Severus, they were kept in treasuries and the temple staff was responsible for keeping records of them. The island of Delos, regarded as the birthplace of Apollo, attracted enormous quantities of offerings from Athens’ Amphiktyonic league, which re-located its treasury there in 478 BC. The inventories were carved in stone by a corps of temple deputies called Amphiktyones. In Delos, votives included statuary of colossal scale, such as the Apollo offered by the residents of Naxos, or the bronze palm tree, alluding to Apollo’s birth under a palm, which was offered by the Athenian general Nikias for his victory of 417. Golden wreathes of victory and liturgical vessels counted in the hundreds. Among this plethora, panel paintings formed a minor but significant category. In the period after the Delians had regained their independence from Athens in 314 BC, they cultivated relations with Ptolemaic Egypt which sent panel paintings for dedications. In the Roman world, then, votive dedications included the offerings of all classes of society, though historians naturally tend to privilege the offerings of emperors. Dio Cassius narrates that following the battle of Actium in 31 BC, where he won Egypt as his personal prize, Augustus built a shrine to “Apollo of Actium” on the site where his tent had been before the battle and, on his return to Rome, he dedicated a temple to Minerva (Athena to the Greeks), goddess of war, adjacent to the Basilica Julia in the forum, where, according to Dio Cassius, “he set up the image of Victory which still exists, indicating, as seems likely, that through her help he had gotten control of the empire.”28 We have already mentioned his offering of the temple with its statue of Jupiter Tonans on the Capitoline.29 Paintings, too, were included among imperial dedications. Caesar had dedicated pictures of Ajax and Medea, both recipients of cult in archaic times, in the temple of Venus in Rome, and Augustus also dedicated a panel of Nemea on her Lion Throne in the Curia, and he re-dedicated the masterpiece of Apelles’ Birth of Venus as his family patroness, in the temple of his father Caesar.30 The Iulii claimed Venus as their great mother. Tiberius in turn dedicated a painting of Zeus’ beloved Hyakinthos by the Greek painter Nikias in the temple of Augustus.31 The accumulation of treasures in temples had the secondary effect of making the temple into a kind of historical museum, as documented in a stele of 99 BC from Lindos, now in the 69

Shrine of Dionysus with the Offering of a Panel-Painting, Mosaic from Hadrian’s Villa, Tivoli AD 130-38, Rome, Museo Vaticano, no. xxxx [Museum photo.]

The Fall of Daedalus and Icarus with the Offering of a Panel Painting,ﬁrst century AD. Pompeii, Casa del Febbro. [Museum photo.]

National Museum of Denmark.32 Their temple having been destroyed by fire, the people of Lindos commissioned a reconstruction as accurate as possible of the temple’s list of the anathemata to emphasize the distinguished ancient history of Rhodes. Typically the entries in this temple record give the name of the dedicant, a description of the object offered, the material from which it was made, and any inscription on the object.

the “sacral idyllic landscapes,” of frequent occurrence in Pompeii and Campania. In her recent treatment of landscape painting of the Augustan age, Eleanor Leach defines the type by “the motif of a shrine with dedicatory offerings or worshipers against the background of a sacred grove.”33 These landscapes decorated the homes of the well-to-do who, as Leach points out, were owners of the kinds of properties that are represented in the scenes. Lacking inscriptions, these paintings do not document specific offerings of this or that person on a specific occasion, but illustrate a common, conventional practice. Their historical value, however, is no less

Roman Sacral Idyllic Landscapes For the votive offering of paintings by ordinary citizens a very telling documentation has survived in what are called 70

The Offering of a Triptych, stucco of the Villa Farnesina, ﬁrst century AD. Rome, Museo Nazionale delle Terme, no. xxxx. [Museum photo.]

The out-of-doors landscape situations in these sacral idyllic paintings clearly describe a less than official level of GraecoRoman religion. Since temple interiors are rare in Roman art, the more official offerings of votives under priestly supervision, such as that documented in the Delos inscriptions, are not illustrated. Access to temple interiors was limited; but in the countryside and on private property a more familiar and spontaneous religious practice was observed. The sites depicted on Sande’s list are of several kinds, ranging from the surroundings of formal temples to simple columns or stones marking a natural sacred spot in the wooded countryside. The Vatican panel with the Dionysus statue at the spring is among the simplest and smallest of Sande’s paintings. The most elaborate example is also one of the largest physically, a landscape painting filling a wall in the Casa dei Ceii, Pompeii. (Chap. Two, Figure 8, The Fall of Daedalus and Icarus with a Panel-painting) On the right, a temple crowns the hill above a river, with tombs, altars and a herm on the opposite bank. The temple itself is quadristyle, with the statue of an animal on a lofty pedestal in front, enclosed within a high crenellated wall. Outside of this temenos, on the rocky ledge in the foreground, two votive offerings have been deposited, a neat pyramid of fruit and an eight-point pinax, perhaps a meter high, propped up on an easel stand. Men and women sit or wander about the landscape, as if in a park. Both the pinax and the fruit may have been part of a single offering, the painting representing the god to whom cult was being offered. In the Greek Anthology a dedication of fruit is accompanied by a pinax inscribed to Pan, patron of herdsmen.38 A temple is shown in another of the paintings on Sande’s list, in the Casa del Febbro, Pompeii (Sande no. 5), where it is inserted into a mythical narrative. Daedalus and Icarus have challenged the divine order of things by inventing wings with which to flee King Minos of Crete; and on a promontory below their flying figures there stands a very formal little distyle ionic temple overlooking the bay. An eight-point framed panel painting has been placed casually but very deliberately leaning against one of the columns. The panel, perhaps a meter in height, shows a vague sketch of a single standing figure, most likely a woman. Other landscapes offer more information on the rituals observed. A drawing of a now-lost Pompeian painting shows a less formal kind of temple, an open four-column tempietto sheltering a statue of a Minerva/Athena, set in a rugged landscape beside a stream (Sande no.12). The tempietto is hung with garlands and ribbons, or taenia, a custom still practiced at shrines in Greece, Turkey and Cyprus.39 The ritual is in progress: a woman, carrying a beribboned thyrsus and wearing a floral crown, pours a libation over a long panel painting propped against the pedestal of the temple, and she in turn is followed by a second woman with an amphora in

authentic for being “typical” rather than specific. Their realism carried conviction for the viewer, who would recognize the details of a familiar ritual practice. The religious attitude embodied in these paintings Leach finds analogous to that expressed by the lyric and elegiac poets of the Augustan era, Tibullus, Propertius, and Horace. Indeed Siri Sande’s very helpful assembly of sacral idyllic views with representations of pinakes amounts to a kind of illustrated tract de religione.34 Siri Sande seventeen examples, she admits, could be increased with study of the original wall paintings. Her own interpretation of the material is directed toward disproving Mathews’ earlier suggestion of a continuity between the Roman pinakes and Christian icons.35 Sande argues rather that the commonality of the Roman representations of the use of panel paintings speaks of an absence of any underlying religious conviction— “bland religiosity” she calls it.36 This is a curious inversion, implying that the more common the evidence the more likely it is to be insincere. Ancient religion, however, worked in a different mode of subjectivity which prioritized practice over creed.37 Religion consisted in a language of signs and gestures by which people structured their relationship with the divinities. The paintings themselves – both the mural landscape paintings and the votive panel paintings which they illustrate – are part of this language of signs and gestures, manifesting the deep penetration of Greek religious practices to all levels of society. The sacral idyllic landscapes contain excellent, detailed evidence of the religious rites, which Sande has bypassed. We can read the basic components of the votive custom in a finely worked mosaic landscape from Hadrian’s Villa (AD 130-138) now in the Museo Vaticano. (Chapter Two, Figure 7, Shrine of Dionysus with a Panel-Painting, Museo Vaticano). A spring gushing from the hillside has been marked as a sacred site by the erection of a bronze or gilded statue of Dionysus in feminine garb, holding grapes in one hand and a thyrsus in the other. This kind of dedication at a spring Leach interprets by analogy with Horace’s Ode 3, 13, “O Fons Bandusiae.” The poet out of gratitude for the abundance of sparkling water offered to the spirit inhabiting the place a bouquet of flowers, a libation of wine, and the blood of a young kid, and he left his ode as a permanent record commemorating the lovely occasion. In the Vatican mosaic landscape the property owner has offered a statue of Dionysus, who was god not just of the vine but of vegetation in general and of fertility, symbolized by his thyrsus. The statue in the mosaic then attracted secondary offerings, lesser anathemata, which are also shown. Someone has left a second thyrsus leaning against the statue as tribute to the god’s gift of fertility, and against the stone base of the statue someone has placed a panel painting with an eight-point frame. One can discern the subject of this little panel only as a standing figure, perhaps again a figure of Dionysus, against a blue ground. 72

hand who approaches to perform the same rite. The pouring of libations is highly significant, meaning that the votive painting, perhaps a representation of the goddess enshrined in the tempietto, has itself become an object of veneration. Libations accompanied the sacrifice made in the early Pitsa panel and are illustrated again in Pompeii, VII, 7; 19 (Sande no. 11). Four more beribboned staffs have been left leaning against the temple base as offerings of earlier visitors to the shrine. Mercury or Hermes, in charge of communications among the gods, pauses at the scene, resting on the bridge over the river, suggesting that the behaviour of the pious does not go un-observed by the gods. In only a single case of Sande’s examples does the representation show the actual rite of depositing the votive painting in progress, but the example is significant. (Chap Two, Figure 9, The Offering of a Triptych, stucco, Mus. Naz. Delle Terme, Rome) On a stucco of the Augustan period from the Villa Farnesina, Rome (Sande no. 15), the sacred grove is represented by a single tree on the left overshadowing a pair of women, one seated with her hand to her mouth and the other standing making an open-handed gesture of prayer. In the center of the composition is an altar draped with cloth and a sheaf of grain, while to the right is a column draped with a garland. Between column and altar stands a third woman who unfolds a triptych and holds it on high for the viewing of her companions, after which she will presumably deposit it on the altar. The triptych she holds seems to show a standing female figure. Evidently triptych paintings, no less than simple panels, were used as votive offerings, which is important

for our interpretation of the door panels in our corpus from Roman Egypt, and beyond.40 The showing of the panel to bystanders was a part of the ceremony of dedicating the panel. The religious character of the rites observed in these sacral idyllic settings is beyond question. The votive painting is often placed against the base of the god’s statue (Sande nos. 2, 4, 13, 17) or against an altar (Sande nos. 7, 8, 9, 14). In one example a woman is tending a fire on an altar for incense (Sande no. 16). The offering of incense was the most traditional gesture of acknowledging the divinity, as attested in Pliny’s correspondence with Trajan concerning the pointed refusal of Christians to take part in such cult. The sacredness of the site can be designated also simply by a column, usually draped with ribbons and tambourines (Sande nos. 1 and 3). Sacred columns and even un-hewn stones were a very ancient tradition in the Hellenic world, regarded as xoana, primitive statues in which the god dwelt.41 In these Sande representations the inclusion of the votive painting associates the painting with the religious nature of the site. Although the small scale of these representations makes it difficult to observe exact particulars, one can notice some of the physical characteristics of the panel paintings that are shown. The paintings are all rectangular in a vertical format and the type of framing is often legible. Following Sande’s count, six of the paintings have the familiar “eight-point” frame, in which the boards of the painting were held by grooved framing members, which extended beyond their mortise-and-tenon joints at the corners. Sande conjectures that such eight-point frames would have been especially sui73

Julia Domna, detail from Septimius Severus and Family, AD 199. Berlin, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Antikensammlung, no. 31329. Photo. by N. Muller [Muller photo.] Septimius Severus and Caracalla, detail from Septimius Severus and Family, AD 199. Berlin, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Antikensammlung, no. 31329. Photo. by N. Muller [Muller photo.]

inscription was found. Thus an official of the Roman rank of eques claimed credit for offering the statues to the god of the temple of Soknebtynis. Perhaps it is significant that the same name H racl s is inscribed on one of the columns of the Roman Kiosk located on the dromos, leading to the main entrance of the temple, suggesting to Rondot that the same individual may have been involved in its construction.

table for outside use to raise the panel above the moisture of the ground.42 Eight panels have a simple frame, which would have been attached to the front surface of the boards; two are uncertain in framing; and one is a triptych. By comparison with human figures, commonly shown in the surroundings, the dimensions of the panels can be estimated with a range from about 30 cm. to 150 cm. in height. The subjects of the paintings represented are never clearly decipherable, but in five cases one can see a shadowy single figure, standing. Sandes’ attempt to dismiss these pinakes as decorative, not religious, paintings must clearly be set aside. They are part of the language of conversation or communication between men and gods. The cumulative information offered by these seventeen examples is impressive. All three types of panels in our corpus are represented in the mural paintings – the simple framed panels, the panels with eight-point frames, and the triptychs – and they all enter equally into religious observances (as they will in Christian usage as well). They are consistently associated with sacred places, whether temples, statues of the gods, altars, or columns. They belong to the sphere of votive offerings which included a variety of other objects: thyrsi, ribbons, garlands, fruit, and libations. The rites depicted in these rustic settings seem to belong to the “laity.” In Roman law, formal religious “consecrations” involved public land, official government sponsorship, and a priestly presence; less formal “dedications,” however, were the right of private citizens on their own property. The people involved in the offering of the panel paintings are not priests but laity, and especially women. Indeed women are a very important chain of continuity throughout our story as principal players in domestic religious rites, studied by Herrin in Byzantium. In Egypt itself Greek inscriptions of the traditional “ep’agatho” type from Philae to the Fayum testify to the Egyptians’ common recourse to the custom of votive offerings. The dedicants named range from Ptolemaic royalty and Roman emperors to simple pilgrims fulfilling their pledges to the gods.43 Significantly, the dated examples of these ep ‘agatho dedicatory formulae cluster fairly closely in late imperial times from Marcus Aurelius to Caracalla (AD 161-217), the peak period of our corpus of panel paintings. In the Fayum two votive inscriptions have recently been reported by Rondot on a pair of calcite statuettes of a male figure, discovered by Grenfell and Hunt from the Roman dromos, or processional way, of the temple of Soknebtynis, Tebtynis, now in the Pheobe Hearst Museum of Berkeley.44 On each statue was found the inscription: H rakl s hippeus aneth ken ep’ agath , “H rakl s the equestrian has dedicated or offered [this statue] for a benefit.” This is a fairly complete example of the dedicatory formula, including the name and title of the dedicant and the classic verb for dedicating. As usual the object of the verb is the statue itself on which the

The Offering of an Imperial Portrait: Septimius Severus, Julia Domna, and Caracalla Although the panel-paintings of Roman Egypt are practically never mentioned in the papyri, one unique exception to this rule is of compelling importance since it seems to contain critical specific information concerning the most outstanding painting in our corpus, the Septimius Severus and Family (Berlin 31329).45 The papyrus P Oxy 1449 mentions a series of paintings to which the Berlin panel seems to belong and so it seems to supply its complete cultic situation. For our purposes this painting is therefore of special significance, uniting as it does traditions of temple observance, votive offerings, imperial cult, and the syncretism of Egyptian gods. The exceptional quality of Septimius Severus and Family and its unique status as the sole surviving panel-painting of a Roman emperor make it the most important ancient panelpainting in existence.46 (Chapter 2, Figures 10-11, along with Figure originally listed in Introduction Figure 4, but postponed to this position. These three figures should show the general view of the Berlin tondo of Septimius Severus and details of the emperor, wife, and son Caracalla with the erasure of Geta) It is also one of the best surviving witnesses to the Alexandrian tradition of painting. Purchased in Egypt in 1932 for the Antikensammlung of the Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin, its exact archaeological provenance is unknown, but as we will see, its historical situation can be reconstructed with a high degree of probability. In addition, because the military dictatorship of Septimius Severus is widely taken to mark the beginning of the period called Late Antiquity, the study of this painting has added significance. In the erasure of the murdered prince Geta, the painting must appear as a dreadful document of barbarity, and this has received the lion’s share of attention in the literature on the painting under the rubric of the damnatio memoriae. But it was nevertheless primarily a religious painting, and that on several levels, and as such it opens the most profound questions regarding the entire set of panel paintings we are examining. The great puzzle of the panel-painting in Berlin is how to reconcile it with the papyrus documentation. We will begin with the evidence intrinsic to the painting itself and then examine the literary source with which it seems to fit to complete our understanding of the work in its religious context. 74

The painting is presently a tondo in form, 31 cm. in diameter. It shows (Lucius) Septimius Severus, who was born AD 145 or 146 in Leptis Magna (present day Lybia) and proclaimed emperor on the 13th of April, 193, along with his second wife, Julia Domna, a Syrian by birth, who was known as Julia the Philosopher for the circle of intellectuals she gathered around herself, including such luminaries as Galen and Philostratus. The painting represents the dynastic ambitions of the emperor in that it includes his two sons (Marcus Aurelius Antoninus) Caracalla and (Lucius Septimius) Geta, the latter’s face subsequently erased. The sons stand in front of their parents, as if presented by them to the viewer, the senior son standing before the emperor and the junior before his mother. Father and sons carry sceptres, the common prerogative of the gods in the other paintings of our corpus (Alexandria 22978, Berlin, 15978, and others47), and the inclusion of the sons allows the painting to be dated fairly closely. Like their father, both sons wear heavily bejewelled oriental crowns, which must post-date the occasion in 198 when Caracalla was named Augustus and his younger brother Geta was named Caesar, the children being only ten and nine years old respectively. Scholarship is satisfied that the occasion of the painting was the family visit to Egypt the following year, between September 199 and April 200. The painting was done in Egypt, as one of a series of identical portraits, as we will see. The eventual dynastic succession, however, did not turn out exactly as planned. When Septimius Severus died in York on campaign against the Scots, the 4th of February 211, Caracalla was on hand to succeed him; but the two sons did not get along and at the end of that year Caracalla simplified things by murdering his brother. While it is often cited and reproduced, the painting has not been very closely examined. The process of painting deserves close study, for it is a clear example of the four-color palette called tetrachromy, attributed by Pliny to Apelles the father of Greek painting in Egypt. Muller describes the method in detail in his analysis of painting techniques in our panels (see below). At the same time, in its style, the Septimius Severus may be the best surviving example of a particular Alexandrian fashion of painting described in Pliny by the word compendiaria, or “shorthand,” invented, he proposed, by Antiphilus in the first generation of Greek painters in Alexandria. Giovanni Becatti emphasizes the appearance of ease and speed, facilitas and celeritas, which Antiphilus achieved by a unique fusion of painting with drawing.48 Instead of using drawing simply as contours and outlines to be filled in with colors, he used drawing for its own coloristic possibilities. In the face of the emperor a surface of quivering light is achieved by a dense hatching of lines of red ochre and white, which as Muller notes, is similar to modelling in Hellenistic wall paintings of Vergina half a millennium earlier. The scale of the painting

must always be kept in mind in examining details; the face of the emperor is a mere 6.5 cm. across—smaller than the palm of one’s hand. The remarkable continuity of the Antique painting tradition must be due above all to the imperial patronage; Alexander brought Apelles to Egypt primarily to paint his own portraits. Imperial patronage must also explain the exceptional single plank of wood used for the painting. The other paintings in the corpus are all constructed of narrower boards laid side by side and held together in grooved frames. For example, the Cairo Dionysus-Harpocrates, 29.9 cm in width, is very close to the width of the Septimius Severus, but it consists of three boards laid vertically side by side. The imperial atelier was able to procure fine imported boards of wood that far exceeded the dimensions available to other patrons. Only in the eighth century icon of Christ and Saint Menas in the Louvre do we find a wider single board 57 x 57 cm. Furthermore, close examination of the surface has revealed an interesting surprise. The painting has been accepted uncritically in its present tondo form for eighty years now, and ever since K.A. Neugebauer’s initial publication of the painting in 1936 art historians have labored at explaining the imperial connotations in what they call the imago clipeata format of the painting (though in fact a tondo format is fairly common in funerary contexts apart from any imperial connections).49 However, in studying the edge of the painting, one notices that the brush strokes are all cut off by the cutting of the edge of the painting, implying that the edge was cut through after the painting had been completed. This would be the reverse of Ancient painting procedure, in which a panel was always framed before being painted and the painter worked right up to and over the frame. This implies that the edge of the Berlin panel was cut subsequent to the completion of the painting. In the cutting of the edge Geta has lost the little domed finial of his sceptre, which his brother and father both have. Even more decisive, if we inspect the proper right shoulder of Septimius Severus we can find that, at the exact centre of the circle of the tondo, a prick mark has been made by the point of the compass that drew the circle for the painting’s edge. It is a minute crater excavated through the pigment and into the white plaster preparation of the board. In normal procedure the circle of the painting would have been drawn and the panel framed before the pigment was laid on, and obviously the paint would have covered the prick mark in the center.50 One must therefore conclude that the cutting of the panel in tondo form is much later. Perhaps the Cairo dealer who was managing the sale had received the painting in damaged condition from his go-between in the antiquities market and to improve its marketability he decided to tidy it up for prospective buyers by trimming it in a neat circle. The children suffered a good deal in this découpage, being 75

Heron Hartford CAPTION TO BE COMPLETED

curls hanging over the forehead and a medium-length divided beard, which are features copied from Bryaxis cult statue of the emperor in Alexandria.53 Earlier scholarship, starting with L’Orange, placed the beginning of the series in AD 204 in the relief of the Arch of the Argentarii, Rome,54 but McCann sees the Serapis traits already in coins of 196-7 and also in our Berlin painting of 199.55 This divine iconography reflects a deep shift both in the emperor’s self-image and in his public propaganda. While early in his career he claimed to be the adopted son of the great philosopher-emperor of the Antonine house, Marcus Aurelius, and he had his portraits shaped to resemble him, after his travels and victories in the East, Septimius Severus saw himself in a new light and his images express a syncretism with Serapis. This syncretism was more than a parlor game of charades. “For no previous emperor is there such an array of portrait types with divine connotations,” says McCann.56 The Historia Augusta records that the first motive of Septimius Severus’ Egyptian tour was propter religionem dei Sarapidis, “for the worship of the god Serapis.”57 The emperor was on a religious pilgrimage, and this would explain the dress of the emperor and his sons in the Berlin painting.58 In parade attire the emperor would have worn a military chlamys, but for religious rites he would wear the toga of the Roman citizen, enriched with gold trim or borders, as in the painting.59 Septimius Severus took part in the worship of Serapis in Alexandria and he introduced the cult of Serapis within the sacred circuit of the pomerium of Rome for the first time, with a temple on the Quirinal. The emperor was deeply involved with astrology and eastern mysticism and drew into his circle the philosopher Philostratus, who may have lent a certain intellectual substance to the emperor’s religious pretensions, with his Life of Apollonius of Tyana and the Lives of the Sophists. Serapis was an African god, and Septimius, an African native, cast himself as a cosmic divinity uniting Roman spheres of Europe and Africa.60 In this way Septimius Severus took his place among the gods. His son Caracalla was also expected to follow his divine footsteps. It generally goes un-remarked, but in the Berlin painting Caracalla was given a row of Sarapis curls across his forehead, and in fact, the darker color of his hair (like his Syrian mother’s) makes the curls more obvious than his father’s, whose hair is light. Being only ten years old at the time the family portrait was made, it was hardly appropriate to give him the Serapis beard as well, but in Egypt the meaning of the curls must have been obvious. He too represented a further incarnation of the powerful god of the underworld, making repeat appearances among mortals. The religious significance of this awesome syncretism deserves to be underscored. The second phase of the portrait must also be remarked upon, for this too was done in Antiquity, and that is the erasure of

awkwardly chopped off high in the chest, eliminating their hands holding the scepters. Most likely the painting had a rectangular format originally, like all the other paintings in our study, and had nothing to do with imagines clipeatae.51 Over the face of the board, Muller notices, a fairly thin, even white ground layer – probably gypsum – was applied, and over this a grey-pink priming coat was brushed. This layering and the priming color compare well with that observed in our panel of an Isis from Assiout (Assiout College Museum 82). Some water drip marks mar the surface and there is wear in places down to the priming. The face of Geta was obliterated by scraping down to the gray priming layer. Then it was covered with a milky ochre wash. Overall, the paint surface is fresh looking, with no grime accumulation exhibiting the restricted four-color palette of red, yellow, black, and white pigments. Apart from some abrasion of Caracalla’s left eye, his face shows the artist’s approach, going from darker to lighter values of red, yellow ochre, and white. A pale red ochre defines the eye sockets, the shadowed areas of the nose, lips, and creases under the chin, while black accents mark the hair, eyebrows, eyelid, pupil, nostrils, and crease between the lips. The yellow ochre band below the neck was painted over a grey preparatory layer, which served as the shadow tone for the cuirass. This represents a remarkable example of a sophisticated understanding of the optical qualities of paint. The sun-burned face of the emperor is modelled with alternating diagonal and cross hatching tones of white and red ochre, similar to the modelling found in Hellenistic mural paintings in Vergina. Worm-like strokes of white and black for the beard convey Septimius’ middle-aged appearance. Unusual is the presence of a brown organic paint on the finial of his scepter, which has the craquelure pattern of asphaltum, a coal tar extract. This substance is also used to outline the large medallions in the emperor’s wreath, hair, beard, eyelids, and the accents to Julia’s hair, eyes and mouth. If confirmed by chemical analysis, this would represent the earliest use of this substance in Western painting.52 Figura aggiunta “III_Heron Hartford” The painting also has a significant religious dimension, which is bypassed in the more recent literature (omitted by Heinen and Rondot, for example), and that is the syncretism of Septimius Severus and Caracalla with the god Serapis. In her exhaustive monograph on the portraiture of Septimius Severus, Anna Marguerite McCann defined five different styles or stages in the emperor’s portrait, dating them by coinage and carefully explaining their iconography and ideology. According to McCann, the Berlin painting stands at the beginning of a series of “referential” portraits of the emperor as Serapis, representations that constitute fully half of his portraits. The telling traits are the separate “cork-screw” 78

was part of the intended effect of the second “life” of the image. Brutality was part of the message. This is true as well of other examples of Geta’s effacement, such as the Arco dei Argentarii in Rome, or, to cite a local Egyptian example, on the customs seal of Karanis used for marking goods arriving by caravan across the desert, Geta was chiselled away leaving a permanent reminder of Caracalla’s unwavering ruthlessness.63 Caracalla had not just murdered his brother, he had eradicated him from the human race. With the power of a god he had made him to have never existed. The painting has often been discussed as if it were intended as an object of public veneration, but the diminutive scale of the faces would hardly suit public display. However, if the painting itself were an offering of cult, then we might be dealing with a very different kind of usage for the image. The papyrological record requires further study. Since the papyrus Oxy.1449 was published by Grenfell and Hunt in 1916, well before the painting had come to light, the editors could hardly have been expected to connect the document with the painting.64 In more recent literature the papyrus has been routinely cited in connection with the painting, but the exact relationship of the document to the painting has not been pursued to its logical conclusions. Instead, scholarship concentrates on the damnatio memoriae.65 Consequently the religious dimensions, both explicit in the papyrus and visible in the painting itself, are generally missed. One must inquire into the precise religious usage witnessed by the papyrus and how the painting might have fit that situation. According to Grenfell and Hunt’s understanding, papyrus Oxy.1449 is an incomplete, preparatory draft of a list of properties from six minor temples in the vicinity of Oxyrhynchus, so minor indeed that they are otherwise unknown in archaeological or literary sources.66 The papyrus (lines 1-2) mentions temples of Zeus, Hera, Atargatis, Core, Dionysus, Apollo and Neotera. These are all Greek names except the Syrian Artagatis. While it is likely that some of the Greek names mask the cults of traditional Egyptian gods (Apollo, for example, often substituted for Horus, and vice versa, and Neotera is Fortuna/Isis) the religious custom of offerings which is documented by the papyrus is fundamentally Greek. The list itself is refered to in the papyrus as graph anath mat n (line 7) “a list of offerings” and properties listed are explicitly called anath mata (lines 9, 10), “dedications” or “offerings,” while the related verb anatith mi, is used a dozen times in the papyrus meaning someone “dedicates or makes a thank offering,” as explained above. This term is the key to the religious use of the painting referring, as we have seen, to one of the commonest religious practices of Antiquity. According to Greek and Roman law, if one deposited an offering for the god in a temple, it became legally the property of that god, and the temple staff had to record the

the junior prince and the covering of the erasure with an ochre wash, to be dated 215-16, when Caracalla made his second visit to Egypt, some sixteen years after the portrait’s first commissioning.61 Muller observes that the face of Geta was obliterated by scraping it down to the grey preparation, which was then covered with a milky ochre wash. Neugebauer mistook this ochre for a fecal matter (to add insult to the erasure), and this has become a favourite item in the scandalous history of the events.62 However Neugebauer cited no evidence for his supposition and an organic substance could never have endured unprotected for two millennia; furthermore, excrement would hardly have been consistent with the continued temple use of the panel. Rather the significant aspect of the erasure is that no effort was made to doctor up the gap, for example by filling in the garments of Julia Domna who stood behind Geta. One can only infer that the brutal effacement 79

offering and carefully preserve it.67 Every year, moreover, the staff were expected to confirm and up-date their records and Oxy. 1449 is a draft for such an up-dating. In another papyrus document of private correspondence in the 2nd century from the vicinity of Tebtynis (Teb. 315), the author warns of the imminent visitation of an examiner of the lists (exestast t n cheirism n), who was known to be very strict (leian austeros) and had authority to arrest delinquents. The writer therefore urges the recipient to put his temple books in order. This is the culture to which the list of papyrus Oxy. 1449 belongs. The preparatory state of the document is evident in the abbreviations, which would have been filled out in the more official document when submitted to the authorities. The imperial portrait referred to in Oxy. 1449 was certainly not a political poster hung in the public square for veneration. Nor was it intended for a “private domestic chapel,” as Nowicka proposed.68 It was temple property and temple usage was somewhat more subtle. By placing an offering in the treasury of the temple the dedicant absolved himself of his debt to the god, and the object offered acquired a sacred status.. The very diverse assortment of offerings included in the list of papyrus Oxy. 1449, gives us a very valuable notion of the scope of the votive practice, which is pertinent to our study at large, since we have seen inscriptional evidence documenting the votive use of others of our corpus paintings. The variety of offerings on the list, reflect the means, the occasions, and the intentions of the dedicants. We are told that the names of the dedicants are inscribed on many pieces, but of others the list says (line 10), “we are ignorant of the dedicators because the offerings (anath mata) have been made in the temple from antiquity.” There are (line 12) “offerings which were dedicated in accordance with ancient custom for vows or pious reasons” (kat’ euchian kai eusebian). The list includes objects directly related to cult such as tables of bronze and silver on which to place offerings before the gods, lamps of silver and gold to offer light before the gods, and altars (b mos) of bronze or silver on which to offer incense (lines 47 and 49), which constitute precious versions of the humble ceramic altars found frequently in Karanis. Still another category were objects of highly personal nature reflecting some special occasion in the dedicant’s life, such as a turquoise green robe (stol kallaïn ), or textiles said to be threadbare with age, and jewellery, including rings, armlets and bracelets for children. There are two mirrors, one of which folds closed, and a pen, and the first object mentioned directly after the first imperial portrait is a wooden couch. Though these objects sound like a pawn-shop miscellany, one could easily find corresponding dedicatory inscriptions for them all in Book VI of the Greek Anthology suggesting likely scenarios for the happy uses that occasioned the offer-

ing of such objects in a temple. The dedication of offerings sometimes involved hiring poets who delighted in composing elegant verses for even the most prosaic offerings. But the commonest objects offered were statues or statuettes of the gods, and this is true of the list in papyrus Oxy. 1449, in which the statues are specified by their material as wood, marble, bronze, silver, or gold and by the names of the gods represented. Among the images, the list mentions statues of the great gods and goddesses, such as a Demeter, whose bust is of Parian marble while the rest is of wood (line 10). Some of these statues and figurines also came laden with personal memories and associations, for example (lines 44-45), “a lamp with a small figure of Kor in unstamped silver weighing I lb, the interior being of wood, dedicated by the mother of Dionysia daughter of Dius of Oxyrhynchus, in accordance with the agreement of Aurelius.” The dedicants wanted their names to accompany the offerings, in expectation of being credited in the god’s sight with having fulfilled their religious duty. The list, clearly, is not a fresh registration of new offerings in the temples but an up-dating of older lists, though some new offerings might also be included. It is a composite list for several different temples, and for each section, the first dedicated object mentioned is the “little painting” (eikonidion) of the emperor Caracalla. This special repeated priority of Caracalla’s image seems to indicate that the occasion for this up-dating of the combined list was precisely the repeated offerings of Caracalla’s portrait. The term used is very important for it is the very first occurrence of the diminutive term eikonidion/ikonidion. The editors Grenfell and Hunt mis-translatedthe word by using the neutral term “representation,” and by omitting the diminutive suffix -idion. In a footnote, moreover, they add that “it is likely to have been of stone.” But this presumption simply reflects the state of the discipline before the discovery of the Berlin panel-painting. In fact, to refer to sculptures the list never uses eik n; instead, over and over it uses the terms agalma and xoanon, and for a diminutive it uses xoanion, “a figurine.” As a rule the list mentions the material from which the sculpture was fashioned because that affected its value. Eik n, on the other rhand,is the common term for a portrait painting. In the second century a merchant sailor arriving in Misenum sent a papyrus letter to his father in Philadelphia in the Fayum, via Alexandria, to which he attached a painting of himself to assure his father of his crossing in good health, called simply eikonin mou, which must have been fairly small to fit in the mail pouch.69 The next known use of the diminutive is for an icon of a Christian Saint Colothus, clearly a panel-painting.70 In the list of papyrus Oxy. 1449 one must therefore take the term to refer to a “little painting” rather than a sculpture of the emperor, and this is how everyone has interpreted the document since the discovery of the Berlin panel. The 80

situation of a religious image dedicated twice. The history of the painting must therefore be reconstructed as follows: The original dedication of the Berlin painting was as Septimius Severus’ thank offering for the elevation of Caracalla and Geta during the family’s visit to Egypt 199-200. It was a joyous celebration of an auspicious occasion that would have established the dynasty of Septimius Severus with the coronation of his two promising sons and heirs. The death of Septimius Severus in 211 and Caracalla’s murder of his brother before the year was out rocked the imperial construction of the divine pantheon from its foundations. In death, the father ascended to ranks divine, but his younger son simply vanished from the globe requiring a corresponding correction in the paintings of the gods and in the temple records of those paintings. Both corrections seem to have survived. Erasing Geta was imperative; to leave him on a panel would be lése-majesté on the part of the priestly staff. The erasure then transformed the painting from being a portrait of Septimius Severus with his family into a portrait of Caracalla with his parents, which suits exactly what the papyrus Oxy. 1449 describes. It might be suggested that the papyrus could refer to newly commissioned painted portraits of Caracalla now lost, with his parents and without Geta, commissioned expressly for the visit of 215-6. However, this would leave us asking why in some cases, as in Berlin, the original Septimius Severus panel was re-tooled to fit the new dedication by erasing Geta while in the hypothetical other cases entirely new paintings were being prepared. One should also note that the hypothetical new paintings would have involved the unlikely pairing of his still living mother with his already deceased father. In our review of the evidence the painting in Berlin served both occasions. It was first dedicated in thanksgiving for the coronation of the sons of Septimius Severus and their joint Egyptian visit with their parents, 199-200. On that occasion the emperor was received as a divine epiphany of Serapis, for which all the towns of Egypt would have expressed their gratitude, by offering a painting of the god in the local temple. When Caracalla made a second visit in 215-6, the priestly staff at nine temples in the vicinity of Oxyrhynchus (as presumably in others all around the country) found themselves thanking the gods for the new emperor’s visit, rededicating the “little paintings” of Septimius Severus by the erasure of Geta. The re-dedication corrected the sacred iconography, and in the process saved the expense of making new paintings. The marked decline in temple financing might have had something to do with this. Concerning the veneration involved in this particular Berlin image we may distinguish two levels of cult. The primary cult is the votive offering itself by the dedicant responsible for the painting. The list of Oxy.1449 names the dedicants per-

newly invented diminutive form of the noun suits exactly the diminutive size of the Berlin portrait. The Berlin painting would have required such a term. The entries for the images of the emperor in papyrus Oxy.1449 give his name and titles with precision (line 7): “the little painting of Marcus Aurelius Severus Antoninus Parthicus Maximus Britannicus Maximus Germanicus Maximus Pius Augustus, and his divine father Severus and Julia Domna the lady Augusta.” Surprisingly, this information escapes Nowicka, Török, Sörries, and Rondot who all mistakenly read the document as describing a painting of Septimius Severus, with his family.71 It is quite clear, however, that the primary referent in the repeated imperial entries of the papyrus list is not the father but the son, Caracalla, as Heinen understood.72 In addition it is very important to notice that papyrus Oxy. 1449 is not speaking of a single “little painting” but refers in identical or abbreviated terms to no less than nine instances of the painting in different temples, and in four of these instances the emperor’s portrait is the only offering mentioned for that particular temple. This argues that the occasion for drawing up this composite list must have been the need to record the portraits of Caracalla, the other entries being entered pro forma, for the sake of completeness, for the eyes of the inspector of lists. The density of this documentation is staggering. The nine temples are minor village temples, so minor that they are mentioned nowhere else in the surviving papyrus record. Yet each one of the nine temples had received an identical imperial portrait. Carried out on this scale across the length and breadth of Egypt, one might calculate that the commissioning of the portraits for the emperor’s visit involved as many as four thousand panel-paintings.73 This extraordinary circumstance suddenly makes more precious the chance survival of a single one of the paintings so commissioned, namely the Berlin panel. The papyrus refers to a very special occasion in Caracalla’s career. From the emperor’s title Germanicus, which marked his victory in Germany in 213, the editors (Grenfell and Hunt) dated the papyrus between 213 and 217, the year of Caracalla’s death. To begin with, it must be later than 213; the inclusion of the emperor’s title Parthicus means it postdates his campaign in Armenia and Osrhoene in 215. Heinen cites an inscription in Alexandria dated March 11, 216, as the inscription closest to the papyrus in that it names Caracalla with his parents, and it includes the title Parthicus.74 The occasion of the papyrus must therefore have been Caracalla’s momentous visit to Egypt, from November 215 to the beginning of 216, in which the emperor distinguished himself by his temple building and his inexplicably savage massacre of civilians. One is therefore dealing with the extraordinary 81

CHAPTER THREE RE-STRUCTURING PANEL-PAINTINGS AND HELLENIZING THE EGYPTIAN PANTHEON

Horus, the sky god, is possibly the first god to appear in Egyptian art, shown in falcon form on the proto-dynastic Palette of Narmer (Egyptian Museum, Cairo, ca 3100 BC). As cosmic god his eyes were the sun and the moon; he was god of the east and god of the dawn. In epic myth he is the son of Osiris and Isis, committed to the avenging of his father’s murder by Seth, and he can appear as a falcon-headed man, or a falcon-winged solar disc. In his most popular image in Ptolemaic and Roman times, however, he is a naked boy with the side-lock of youth, standing boldly upright on the back of a crocodile and strangling snakes and scorpions in his outstretched hands. He is the protector of children and family. At this time, too, the boy god achieves international popularity on the lap of his nursing mother Isis. We begin our investigation of the Hellenizing of the pantheon with Horus because of his privileged position as the most popular of Egyptian gods in Late Antiquity. Two profound changes characterize the Egyptian pantheon in Late Antiquity as documented in our panel-paintings. On the one hand, we find a new tenderness bordering even on sentimentality, bringing the gods into a touchable domestic intimacy with their human suppliants, especially around the “family” units of Isis with her son Harpocrates and Isis with her consort Serapis. (Chapter Three, Figure 1, Dionysus accompanied by Isis, Serapis and Harpocrates. Louvre 1912MND 932) At the same time, in this final phase of Egyptian art we find a new intellectuality, a desire to construct a rational chart of images, a topography of the divine world, that will make understandable the new hierarchy of syncretisms of the gods and their roles in governing human affairs. Both of these new and very distinct tendencies involve the extensive Hellenization of the most ancient of Egyptian divinities and both involve three pictorial templates of particular importance in LateAntiquity at large. Although the term syncretism was applied to the Egyptian gods’ assumption of foreign identities, it has very ancient applications to the “in-house” merging of one Egyptian god with another Egyptian god (for example Isis with Hathor, or Horus with Sobek), and then it is employed (by Rondot)

to describe the larger process whereby the entire pantheon was expanded to accommodate a new set of divinities. Our investigation of Horus as Child (Harpocrates) necessarily includes his mother Isis, for whom eventually Christian art creates its parallel in placing Jesus and Mary at the core of the Christian “pantheon.” It is significant that the pantheon of classical Greece had no comparable mother-and-child grouping. Hera’s role toward her offspring Ares and Hephaistos is never described as maternal in literary or in visual sources. Furthermore Har-pa-chered literally “Horus the Child” has no real counterpart among Greek gods. One would look in vain for representations of Zeus or of Neptune as children; Dionysus might be cited, but his human mother made him technically a demi-god and he does not appear with his mother. The veneration of Horus as a child, however, was current at the very origins of Egyptian religion, and his mother Isis is always part of the story in myth and in works of art. Harpocrates-Dionysus In the Roman era a key monument in the new syncretism of Horus iconography is the Cairo panel-painting in which he assumes the persona of Dionysus (Cairo, HarpocratesDionysus IE 31568). (Chapter Three, Figures 3, 4, + III_4bis Cairo_JE31568_det5 + III, 4 Cairo_JE31568_det4 – non metterei il disegno) This painting and the Berlin Septimius Severus, are the best preserved documents of the Alexandrian school painting and among the most profound paintings of Late Antiquity. Harpocrates’ index finger to his lips is a gesture bidding silence in the presence of the divine mystery, and it is a mystery we cannot expect fully to explain two millennia later, removed as we are by the Christianization of the ancient world and by the modern secularization of that Christianization. The reconstruction of Egyptian religion in the domestic zone poses special problems. The most numerous block of iconography, namely the abundant terracotta figurines from the domestic context of the Fayum, is “illiterate,” in so far as they come to us without the documentation of papyri and inscriptions. Many of their subjects lack temple parallels that 85

Dionysus accompanied by Isis, Serapis, and Harpocrates, 117-38 AD. [192 cm.]. Paris, Musée du Louvre, no. 1912 MND 932 Ma 3128 [Museum photo. by Hervé Lewandowski]

Sobek with halo of Helios. Terracotta. Berlin, Staatliche Museen Aegyptisches Museum, no. 10314 [Museum photo.]

might clarify their meaning. At the same time, the terracottas are closely related to our corpus of panel-paintings in their domestic origins as well as in their votive use, if we may accept Françoise Dunand’s hypothesis of a primary votive use for them in domestic niches or shrines.1 In fact, many were designed as little pictures with molded frames that imitate the Oxford eight-point frame of our panel-paintings, complete with holes for a cord to hang them on the wall. Made in multiples from clay, they might be regarded as inexpensive substitutes for the paintings. (Chapter Three, Figure 2 Sobek with halo of Helios, Berlin terracotta) Though many of them ended up finally in burials, Dunand regards this as a secondary use. We will introduce one interesting but neglected local literary source (in Clement of Alexandria) of the late second century describing pointedly the domestic and apparently religious use of panel-paintings of erotic content, similar to pieces in the terracotta corpus, and mentioning the very subject of one of our panel-paintings (The Love of Ares and Aphrodite, Moscow 5786). The academic compartmentalization of disciplines has until now denied us the benefit of connecting this reference to the art works involved.2 In popular culture in Late Antiquity, Horus the Child (Harpa-chered) was far and away the most important god, and this is strikingly demonstrated by the statistics of the terracottas. Because these figurines were found in the hundreds in the residential neighborhoods of the Fayum towns, but were conspicuously absent from temple finds, they seem to constitute a reliable measure of popular religious practice outside the immediate control of the priesthood. The figurines, one must realize, are not decorative genre subjects but religious material, like our corpus of panel-paintings, from the same context. In the Louvre collection of 494 figurines, representations of Harpocrates number 218, which is fully 44.1 percent of the total. Moreover, this statistic finds startling confirmation in the numbers of the comparable collection of terracottas in the Egyptian Museum of Cairo, where out of a total of 450, the Child Horus numbers 195, which is 43.3 percent.3 The terracottas thus demonstrate the centrality of the Harpocrates myth and also illustrate its extensive Hellenization, as we will see. Our task in understanding the Cairo painting of HarpocratesDionysus is somewhat facilitated by the survival of Harpocrates iconography in seven other paintings in our corpus which must be studied together. We must examine in particular the London Harpocrates in a Naos (BM 1891.4-23,1), the little door panel with Harpocrates on a Lotus Blossom, Berlin (19644), and the Harpocrates in reduced register in Nemesis with Harpocrates (Copenhagen 685). We will follow Horus through imagery of increasing complexity starting with the god by himself, proceeding to the god with Isis his mother, 86

and then the pairing of Isis with her spouse Serapis whose Hellenization we will examine in other panel-paintings. This involves new image formats for organizing the pantheon of the gods, which we are calling image “templates.” Specifically, we must deal with three image templates: (1.) The naiskos, or portable shrine-box designed for transporting the statuette of the god and often having decorated doors. (2.) The painted triptych, or three-part painting, which departs from the naiskos by substituting a painted representation of the god for his statuette. (3.) The hierarchic register painting, which arranges its subjects in a single complex composition of registers and grades them by size. These are three distinct structural systems whose organization seems to have been first thought out with great consistency by temple priests, with a view to integrating an entirely new rank into the Egyptian pantheon, namely the military gods of Syro-Arabian origin who protected the caravan routes. This latter cluster of divinities involves the largest coherent group of paintings within our corpus, fifteen in all, which Rondot has sorted and explained with painstaking detail. Remarkably, it was the challenge of organizing this new set of celestial personalities that seems to have prompted the invention of the two new pictorial templates, the triptych and the hierarchic registers, both of great importance to the history of art. Late Antiquity has been generally regarded as the denouement of the creative, Classical phase of art, but in painting, 87

Harpocrates-Dionysus, ďŹ rst century AD. [59x54 cm.] Cairo, Egyptian Museum, no. JE 31568. Photo. by N. Muller [Muller photo.]

Harpocrates-Dionysus, ﬁrst century AD. detail of face showing grey primer layer. Cairo, Egyptian Museum, no. JE 31568. Photo. by N. Muller [Muller photo.]

tympanum of the Tomb of the Palmettes from Lefkadia, which was uncovered in 1971.5 This tradition apparently continued into the late medieval period in Italy, as grey and red ochre undercoatings for blue on frescoes and panel-paintings are widely known.6 These grey primings eventually evolved to the terra verde color that was adopted as the underpaint, or priming, for flesh color on early Christian icons and later for medieval painting. Green is the complementary color of red, but it is also the natural appearance that flesh assumes in shadow, although some may see this as a grey. We find, for example, an opalescent grey-green underpaint on the face of the Madonna of Sta Francesca Romana, thought to date from the fifth century. A grey-olive tone is also found on the Christ Pantocrator from Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai, which is dated to the first half of the sixth century. And dark grey priming underlies the flesh tones on the fresco of the Virgin and Child between Saints Felix and Adauctus in the Catacomb of Commodilla, which dates to 528. All of these examples demonstrate, we propose, an evolutionary process from Roman Egypt that originated in Hellenistic Greece, even though the development did not occur in a straight line and we have many gaps in our evidence. The Harpocrates-Dionysus employed a limited palette, using several values of the same color, the darker obviously being applied for the shadows. Three-dimensional modeling was achieved by hatching: the application of parallel and crosshatched stokes of increasingly darker values of red and brown ochre toward the shadowed portions of the body. A contrast of warm and cool shadows can be observed in Harpocrates’ right hand, the cooler shadow above and the warmer, redder shadow below. Red outlining is found around the fingers of both hands, the color approximating the way transmitted light will emphasize the red color of flesh; this is akin to late medieval Italian painting from the twelfth through the fourteenth century. But for the shadowed portions of his body, such as his left shoulder, the artist modeled with cooler brownish greys. These value gradations of ochre seem to give the artist the flexibility he needed. This virtuoso technique of rendering flesh may be favorably compared to the painting the Rape of Persephone (Kor ) from the tomb of the same name in Vergina, Greece, from the middle of the fourth century BC. Parallel strokes of dark ochre can be seen in the modeling of her right arm, a technique found on a number of other paintings in our corpus, such as the fragmentary Berkeley 6.21386. The handling of the face is especially interesting with thin washes of the flesh tone brushed over a base color of a light warm grey, reserving areas of the grey primer to simulate the color of flesh in shadow. The grey priming serves as a midshadow tone for the flesh and it unifies the tonal quality of the paint applied on top of it, as can be seen on the proper

its inventions were of decisive importance to the future of European art. On the verge of receiving the Christian ranks of divine powers, artists confronted another set of divine powers from the Syro-Arabian desert who were accommodated into the existing Graeco-Egyptian pantheon more easily than Christ with his cohorts of angels and saints would be. We will start with two paintings of the reclining Horus that are a century and a half apart and which give a measure of the evolution of painting style under way, as well as of the depth of the spiritual issues at stake. We will begin the discussion of each image with technical observations under Norman Muller’s guidance. The scanty survival of painting in Alexandria itself beyond a few faded tomb paintings gives a special value to the Cairo Harpocrates-Dionysus. Technically this painting has much in common with the Berlin Septimius Severus and Family. In spite of its publication by Rubensohn in 1905, it still goes largely unstudied and was included in LIMC only in its most recent supplement.4 The Harpocrates-Dionysus painting measures 59 x 34 cm, and consists of three separate boards of vertically grained wood now held together by small wooden dowels inserted in the sides of the adjacent boards. Exposed raw wood provides evidence of reserved margins along the top, bottom and right sides, demonstrating that the boards were originally also held together by a slotted frame, similar to the eight pointed examples found in our corpus (Alexandria 22978, Berlin 15978, and Providence 59.030, and Tebtunis 230) which, however, dispensed with dowels and were content with the tightly wedged frame. Unfortunately, the three separate boards that comprise this painting are now glued to a cloth-covered panel in back, which prevents one from examining the painting in detail. On the other hand, the paint surface itself is in remarkably good condition, free from the dirt and grime that disfigures many of the other paintings in our corpus, allowing us to view the painting much as it looked originally. The white ground layer we assume is ground gypsum, as were all the other grounds we analyzed. Under magnification, the paint layer has small air pockets in it, which is characteristic of an acqueous based medium, such as gum, glue, or egg, which was visible as well in a macro photograph of the Berlin tondo. Over the white ground layer the artist brushed a preliminary light warm grey primer, which is graded in vibrant tones from the brightest in the upper left to the darkest in the lower right. (Chapter Three, 4 detail of Grey Pirmer in face.) This color serves as the background of the nude figure but is also apparent as the reserved shadow grey around the eyes of Harpocrates. A dark grey priming layer, composed essentially of carbon black, white chalk and iron oxide bound with egg was found on the 4th century BC fresco of a reclining couple from the 90

Harpocrates in a Naos, ca.300 AD. [27.6 x 13.5 cm.]. London, British Museum 1891.4-23.2. Photo. by N. Muller [Muller photo.]

left side of the face and under the right eye. Light washes of a flesh color were then applied, followed by nearly white and pink accents as highlights. (ChapterThree, Figure 4 bis, Grapes in Harpocrates’hand.) The artist approaches with free, quick, almost impressionistic strokes the rendering of the grapes, where the juxtaposition of different values of yellow and brown ochre emphasize the bursting ripeness of the fruit with the dot of white highlight against the darkest tone of the grapes, placed in turn against a dark background. We are viewing the work of a highly skilled artist, sure of his craft. Furthermore, the three-valued rendering of the bunched and drooping chiton exposing the god’s sexuality, and the red ochre outlining for the god’s right arm and left hand, seems to point to Italian painting centuries later. Value gradations of ochregave the artist the flexibility he needed. The painter applied diagonal strokes of grey for the deepest shadow on the sides of the torso and on the outer edge of the forearm. The pale yellow of the grapes is probably massicot (the yellow monoxide of lead), conveying the palpable roundness and translucency of the grapes. This is an artist in full command of his craft. Our second painting of Horus the Child, or Harpocrates (London BM 1891.4-23.2), shows the god without his Dionysiac character and the distance between the two images is a measure of the theological inquiry taking place at this time. (Chapter Three, Figure 6, Harpocrates in a Naos, ca. AD 300 London, BM 1891.4-23.2.) Stylistically, the London painting belongs to the colorful Karanis contour style of AD 300-50, of which it is an excellent example. This style turns away from modeling shapes through contrasting light and shadow and defines the forms rather in soft but firm contour lines of contrasting weights; the painter distinguishes the heavier gentle curves of forearm and knee from the ever more delicate lines of Harpocrates’s finger and face, down to his curly hair and eyelashes. This was a shadowless style, with no evidence of modeling for the flesh tones, but a bright and colorful palette of contrasting colors. A yellow ochre-colored border, representing the god’s naos, frames the composition, contrasting with the field of recessive, dark sage in the background, while the mauve of Harpocrates’ tunic contrasts with the deep red of the mantle across his lap. Muller notes that this painting measures 27.7 x 13.6 x .8 cm and now consists of two boards of vertical grain. The right board has a curved split through the body of Harpocrates, and there is loss in the upper left corner. It is possible that there was a third board to the right, but how the boards were joined is unknown, since the narrow space between them does not permit observation of this. With an unpainted margin of 5-6cm along the bottom, it is clear that the panels were placed in a slotted, 8-point Oxford frame. Concerning the painting process, no ground is distinguisha-

ble from the paint layer on top. No varnish is present. There is much flaking of the paint, particularly the sage green background, exposing the wood support. The remaining paint is rubbed and fragmentary, obscured with a grey grime layer. The thick sage green paint is laid over a buff paint layer. X-ray fluorescence of the tiny paint sample detected the elements copper, iron and manganese, suggesting that the green paint may consist of a green copper carbonate, such as malachite, plus yellow iron and manganese oxide. The god’s flesh tones consist of yellow ochre and white with pale madder accents for the bridge of the nose, cheeks, and chin. The lines that outline the figure’ features are a dark blackishbrown paint The tunic appears to be a thin madder wash over a pale sage color, with pale gray accents for highlights, while a dark red is used for the mantle over his knees.7 These two paintings of the same reposing god present a wide chasm in style, as well as in the spiritual understanding, of one and the same divinity. The London painting is more traditional, satisfied with a known type of the subject familiar in the terrracottas, while the Cairo Harpocrates-Dionysus undertakes to explore its subject by thinking through the issues posed by the syncretism of Horus with Dionysus. The painter’s understanding of Hellenism is by no means a rote or superficial repetition of formulae and places the work at the head of a flood of Dionysiac subjects, whose neglect in Egyptology is lamented by Rondot.8 The painter never abandons the Egyptian theology of his subject but rather seeks to expand the ancient myth. It is a thoroughly Greek study of the nude, which takes the body of Harpocrates as the model and source of health. In earlier days, the devotees would stroke a nude boy in the Horus cippus relief sculpture and would pour water over it to receive its blessing by washing in, or drinking, the water from the image.9 The Egyptian theological meaning of Horus as a god of health is found to fit well with the Hellenistic appreciation of nudity. The face of the god of Dawn is happy within its Dionysiac wreath of ivy and flowers. In this sympathetic syncretism between the Egyptian religious content and its Hellenistic realization, the solitary jarring note is the wide-eyed dog. As the dog is not called for by the Dionysiac myth, which would have preferred a panther,10 and as it is certainly not a playful genre intrusion, for the god never notices it, one must seek its meaning elsewhere. The Greek-ness of the painting contrasts sharply with the London version of the subject. This is the only painting of our corpus from Roman Egypt which attempts a real ambiance for its subject, with a rustic landscape setting. Red flowers with floppy blossoms decorate the ground where the boy god sits and tree branches arch over him on either side with red flowers and clusters of berries. Only in textiles can we find a comparable setting. The flowered ground appears in the large 92

Dionysus with Isiac Attendant, sixth century. AD. Textile, [58x55 cm.] Paris, Musée du Louvre, no. xxxx (du Bourguet, p. 133) [Museum photo.]

Dionysiac textile of Berne-Boston-Cleveland Museums.11 The more intimate textile in the Louvre shows Dionysus with a red flowering tree as well as the flowering ground.12 (Chapter Three, Figure 5, Dionysus with Isiac Attendant, 6th century AD, Louvre Textile) This setting had Dionysiac associations referring to his role in bringing the science of agriculture to Egypt and India. It is noticeable that the agricultural technology of Egypt in this period is thoroughly non-Egyptian, from the Roman design of pruning knives, to the Roman architecture of granaries. The god wears a gold bulla around his neck, an ornament common among aristocratic Roman youths, and a gold bracelet. He clutches in his left hand a great bunch of yellow grapes and thoughtfully puts his right index finger to his mouth. The subject may owe something to a famous Boy with Grapes by Zeuxis (420-400 BC), of which Pliny writes.13 Zeuxis’ painting was so lifelike that it deceived the birds who tried to eat the grapes, but the artist expressed his disappointment, observing that if it was really lifelike, the birds should have been scared off by the boy. It is possible that the Cairo painting preserves some reminiscence of Zeuxis’ masterpiece, but more proximately it reflects the artistic tastes of Alexandria, which had a special interest in children and in still lifes. Children are a common diversion in Roman wall paintings, in which they frequently play at adult activities such as hunting, going to battle, and competing in hippodrome races. But here the “child” is specifically the young Dionysus. Because the dog is not part of the Dionysus myth, nor does the boy play with it as he might if it were merely some genre detail of a child at play, it must be connected with the Egyptian half of the syncretism. Two dogs were especially prominent in the Egyptian divine world Anubis, the goddog guardian of the dead, and Sirius, the dog-star connected with the inundation of the Nile (in Egyptian Sodpet, in Greek Sothis). It is conceivable that both associations are intended in the painting, however since Anubis is usually shown black and seated as a watch-dog, while the Cairo panel shows a white and tan dog in a lively pose, the association with Sirius should be considered. The rising of the Dog Star on 19 July coincided with the flooding of the Nile and marked the start of the calendar year, which was celebrated with a feast of the triad Osiris, Isis, and Horus, instituted by Ptolemy III. In Fayum terracottas, Horus is given the dog of the star to ride upon, as Isis also rides on him on the pediment of her grand temple in Rome.14 The exact coincidence of the rising of the Dog Star with the start of the solar cycle occurs every 1460 years (only!) and its occurrence in AD 139, was regarded with awe among astronomers as the beginning of a New Age, an occasion marked with a special coinage in Alexandria (under Antoninus Pius). In our Harpocrates-Dionysus painting, the dog is not a child’s playmate but the Dog Star and his 94

divinity is expressed by an aureole of mauve light around him and by his unusual bulging eyes. Bulging eyes are used as a special sign of divine power in the corpus of our panelpaintings, noted by Rondot in Lycourgos wielding his double axe (Etampes and Brussels), and especially meaningful in the syncretism of Sobek with Horus (Oxford 1922.238).15 It is significant that Sobek does not have the bulging eyes in Berlin 15978 but acquires them for his special syncretism with Horus, the god of dawn, in Oxford 1922.238 and in the related limestone relief Cairo 27569. Our panel-painting, we might suggest, represents in the symbolic language of these paintings, the astronomical coincidence of the rising of the Dog Star with the rising of Horus the Dawn in AD 139.16 It is a painting made to signalize the start of the new millennium. If this is likely the painting might be associated with the New Age celebrations of that year. This would put it reasonably close to our other accurately dated painting, Septimius Severus, of AD 199; they clearly belongs together technically and stylistically. Firm dates being scarce in our paintings, the date of the Harpocrates-Dionysus is all the more tempting. To identify Harpocrates with Dionysus was a stroke of genius, adding new layers of meaning to him, for Dionysus, child of Zeus and Semele, was a primeval god of fertility and frenzy, symbolized by his winemaking. Syncretism was a great leap of the imagination, redefining the nature of the god and finding new riches through new associations. Its benefits worked both ways: as a way of presenting the Egyptian god to a Greek public and as a way of presenting the Greek god to an Egyptian public. The conflation of Harpocrates with Dionysus was an explosive meeting. They were figures of medicine, miracles, and mahem. Devotion to the image was not a matter of deciphering the obscure symbols, but of entering into that world where gods and men were in close and easy communion. The divine child in the London Harpocrates in a Naos is more naturally childish in proportions of head to body and he lacks all allusions to Dionysus. On his head he wears an Egyptian pschent over a garland of roses instead of the Dionysiac ivy of the Cairo painting. He is missing the aristocratic Roman bulla but has a gold bracelet. There are no grapes. There are terracotta versions of this simple composition, in which his left hand holds a cornucopia, which might have been the case in the London painting as well. Eyes wide and thoughtful, with wet eyelashes, he gazes slightly over the onlooker. Modestly dressed in a tunic, his mantle is thrown nonchalantly over his lap. In this presentation within his naos, he plays the role of the god as he would have been seen when carried about in a naiskos shrine for veneration in the villages, and this may well have been the particular cultic use of this image. This is a development we must investigate further, for one might 95

Harpocrates on a Lotus Blossom, ca. 200 AD. [24.5 x 5.5 cm.] Berlin, Staatliche Museen Aegyptisches Museum, no. 19644. Photo. by C.J. Mathews [C.J. Mathews photo., T.F. Mathews has photo.]

Harpocrates on the Lotus Throne, ca. 300 AD. Karanis granary mural painting C65CF4. Watercolor. Ann Arbor MI., Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, No. xxxx [Museum photo.]

see the painting as substituting for a naos. The absence of Dionysiac allusions may look like a retreat from syncretism of the Cairo painting, but this tendency was not general, for Dionysiac imagery continued very popular in textiles, and in funerary sculpture of the 3rd and 4th centuries Dionysiac subjects are common, as documented by Thomas.17 Textiles may also have supplied the continuity, for they are similar in size and composition to our panel-paintings, and their subjects, too, are regularly haloed and shown against a blue ground. The parallel to terracottas is borne out again in another panelpainting of the figure of Horus the Child, a broken door panel in Berlin (19644).(Chapter Three, Figure 7, Harpocrates on a Lotus Blossom, Bertlin 19644). Muller observed the “red (vermillion) border of 1.2 cm. at the top and right side, edged with lines of white and grey. Against a thin blue-grey background the figure is schematically rendered in a pink tunic with shadow tones of bright red ochre with glaze of dull brown ochre on top. The face is simply drawn in red/ brown ochre and black. With very little craquelure, the paint surface may have been treated with a coat of nitrocellulose to consolidate it, according to Berlin conservator Pohl.” There are two corner pintels, but this is too little to allow one to say definitely whether it was the door of a triptych or of a naiskos (the construction of such little shrines is discussed with triptychs below). The general composition, however, can be paralleled in a terracotta in the Louvre (E 30249), as Rondot indicated, from which we can conclude that it is indeed Horus holding a lotus bud.18 Beyond that, however, one must observe that the painting shows a static, symmetrical god seated quite frontally on a cushion, wearing a tunic with the pshent on his head. The terracotta of the same subject, on the other hand, shows a naked baby boy twisting quickly to his right to greet the rising sun that appears in a great Helios-type radiant halo behind him, creating a mandorla of light. The Helios halo consists of rays of light in triangular form. His seat is a spreading lotus capsule amid a profusion of plants and sea creatures, illustrating very graphically the Creation Myth that describes the sun rising out of a lotus floating on the waters of Nun, the ocean of chaos. Like the Harpocrates-Dionysus, the terracotta evokes a great cosmic moment in the Horus myth, but it is quite a different moment from the birth of the sun. This is the story of the transformation of the deceased into a lotus, in hope of rebirth. “I am this pure lotus which went forth from the sunshine . . . I have descended that I may seek it for Horus, Oh Lotus, belonging to the semblance of Nefertem.”19 In death the deceased lives as the sweet perfume of the blue lotus (Nefertem). The sensuous nakedness of Harpocrates-Dionysus symbolizes the Egyptian preoccupation with death and re-birth 96

central to the myth of Isis and Serapis but reminds us that Egyptian religions was not a philosophical Gnosticism. A very large percentage of the terracotta figurines of Horus involve his role as the intimate family god, protector of children, promoter of sexual power, fertility, and lactation. Sexual fantasies abound among the terracottas, including Horus with an exceptionally long penis, Isis lifting her skirts to exhibit her sex, Aphrodite (Isis’ double) in diaphanous clothes or simply naked from head to toe. The family shrines which received these terracottas were concerned with intimate family matters in a frank, un-prudish fashion. Figure 8

along with some other, as yet un-deciphered, ornaments on his right shoulder. His pink and brown complexion contrasts with Aphrodite’s white and pink face, which features shadows in grey hatching. Her hair, tied with a brown ribbon, falls in black curls on her shoulders, and she has a bracelet on her right wrist. The face-to-face intimacy of the couple is also found in the the face-to-face encounter of the satyr and maenad lovers in a textile in Cleveland.20 This very fragile Greek mythological painting was acquired by the Pushkin Museum in 1911 from the collection of Vladimir S. Golénisheff, and it has a lot to say about the Hellenizing of Egyptian painting. The narrative of The Love of Ares and Aphrodite is a vignette, told as a love story in Odysseus’ entertainment at the court of Alcinoüs (Odyssey, VIII, 267ff.). 21 The subject also enjoyed considerable popularity in Greek vase painting, and returned to popularity as a double portrait format in Republican and Augustan times, revived again in the 2nd century.22 Its Roman portrait use led Parlasca to interpret the Moscow painting as a portrait, taking the Apis ornament on Ares’ breast to indicate that the male figure was deceased. But while the Apis ornament guarantees its

Ares and Aphrodite Our reporting on the important painting of Ares and Aphrodite in Moscow (Pushkin I, 1A 5786), was limited to the inspection by Rondot. Measuring 42.2 x 28.5 x 0.4-0.5 cm, it is composed of four planks, missing their original framing, and now under glass. The background is beige behind Ares and black/brown behind Ahprodite, with her mantle being the same hue, with a red lining. Ares’ short-sleeved tunic seems to be red ochre; he wears an Apis pendant on a cord, 97

with a wide-ranging critique of the inconsistencies of popular pagan notions of the gods, and secondly with an overview of the superiority of the Christian cult of the one God who created all things and mankind through the Logos. Since he is addressing the Greeks, he bases his arguments on the opinions of select Greek thinkers who seem to concur with his position. This kind of critique of popular pagan practice had a long tradition among the Greeks themselves, including Herodotus, Euripides, Plato, Xenophon, Plutarch, and eventually the Neo-Platonists.27 Where Clement advances is in the relentlessness of his demythologizing of the gods. With abundant citations, he finds the gods of the myths to be inconstant, fickle, violent, bloodthirsty, avaricious, intemperate, immoral, but also vulnerable and very human. The stories of their origins are ridiculous, including some gods who were known to have been human, such as Heracles and Hephaistos, and others who were known to have been invented in Egypt in historical times, such as Serapis and Antinoüs. Clement again turns to Greek philosophers, who were inspired, he maintained, by Hebrew Scriptures, for their occasional glimpses—scintillations, he calls them—of the nature of the one true God, the creator of all things and of the spiritual vocation of mankind. One, in truth, one is God, who made both heaven and the far-stretching earth, and ocean’s blue wave, and the mighty winds. But many of us mortals, deceived in heart, have set up for ourselves, as a consolation in our afflictions, images of the gods of stone, or wood, or brass, or gold or ivory.28 According to Clement, before the foundation of the world, mankind already pre-existed in the mind of God as the rational creature of the Logos of God, who now recently had made his appearance on earth. Material representations of the gods, he therefore argues, are basically deceitful, as Plato had maintained, since the divine is spiritual. Worse, the representations of the lusts of the gods are positively immoral, leading the viewer to immoral behavior. Intending thus to deflect pagan accusations of Christian immorality, Clement condemns the representations of “little figures of Pan, naked girls, drunken satyrs and obscene emblems,” and “the postures of licentiousness.” More to our point though, Clement’s writings inform us about the placement of panel-paintings at home. “But when they are hung on high you treasure them still more, just as if they were actually the images of your gods; for you dedicate these monuments of shamelessness in your homes, and are as eager to procure paintings of the postures of Philaenis as of the labours of Heracles.” Having been brought up a pagan, Clement understood perfectly the practice of his non-Christian neighbors as well as the religious intention behind the practice. The language he uses is that of votive offerings: anakeimena is used as the passive of the verb anatith mi, “to place as a votive offering,”

Egyptian origin, the faces are too impersonal to be portraits; indeed the two gods look a lot like twins, with the same lips and nose. The painting should be first read as illustrating the verses of Homer, familiar to every graduate of the gymnasium. Ares still wears his helmet as if fresh from battle, and he takes Aphrodite by the hand, as explicitly mentioned in Odyssey VIII, 265?, to lead her to bed. Aphrodite, not unwilling, throws her mantle around his shoulders and draws him to her breast, her chiton slipping off her shoulder, as commonly seen in Roman representations of Venus. In Homer the story is explicitly framed as setting forth the moral problem of adultery, for the two are caught in the act by Hephaistos’ clever net and ridiculed in the council of the gods. In the end of the story, however, Neptune makes Hephaistos free the guilty pair, and Hermes declares that Ares’ pleasure was well worth the disgrace! The popularity of this subject is demonstrated by its recent discovery in a fourth century villa in Ameida in the Dahleh Oasis, complete with the council of gods viewing Aphrodite’s embarrassment.23 In Egypt, Aphrodite was syncretized with Isis, adding a further nuance to the myth. A Christian Observer In the last decade of the second century AD an observer in Alexandria offers pointed information on the domestic use of pagan panel-paintings in Egypt, mentioning specifically the Love of Ares and Aphrodite.24 Titus Flavius Clemens was a man of extraordinary erudition, and the fact that he mentions a panel-painting found in our corpus is of extraordinary interest for its unique historical value. The fact that he was Christian and disapproved of what he observed does not discount his report, although this circumstance needs to be reckoned with. Commonly known as Clement of Alexandria, he seems to have been born to pagan parents in Athens, came to Alexandria around 190, and left the city for Asia Minor during Septimius Severus’ persecution of Christians in 202 or 203.25 His writing is characteristically Alexandrian, both in the construction of his theology around the Logos, and in the allegorical bent of his exegetical method. Concerned with defining the relationship of Christian to Greek philosophy, he had a decisive influence on all subsequent discussion of this critical issue. His Exhortation to the Heathens (Greeks), belongs to a literary genre known as apology, which Paul Corby Finney has examined in depth. Finney characterizes the Exhortation as an “open letter,” addressed to no one by name but rejoining a broad band of anti-Christian polemic in circulation in the second century.26 The Christian refusal to worship the ancient gods had been taken for atheism and the secrecy of their cult had been taken to imply a concealment of immoral practices. Clement addresses both of these accusations indirectly, first 98

and kathierosantes, means “to dedicate or set up as sacred.”29 What Clement was especially condemning was the incorporation of lewd panel-paintings into a religious practice. In this category he might have included the Kore of Ann Arbor, but he expressly mentions the Love of Ar s and Aphrodit , for which he cites the passage in the Odyssey. These panels are hung in bedrooms, he tells us: “In the lewdness to which their thoughts are given, [the Greeks] adorn their chambers with painted tablets hung on high like votive offerings, regarding licentiousness as piety and when lying upon the bed, while still in the midst of their own embraces, they fix their gaze upon that naked Aphrodite, who lies bound in her adultery.”30 Clement’s testimony to the contemporary pagan practice of offering panel-paintings in their homes, and specifically in their bedrooms, is precious and unassailable evidence for the uses of some of the paintings in our corpus. Because he is addressing the Greeks, he could not have fabricated the practices of those he was criticizing. Not only does Clement understand the practice of votive offerings, but he finds a way to turn it to his advantage in explaining the Christians’ abstinence from the practice. Christians, he argues, “are they who, in this living and moving statue, man, bear about the image of God, an image which dwells with us, is our counsellor, companion, the sharer of our hearth, which feels with us, feels for us. We have been made a consecrated offering (anath ma) to God for Christ’s sake.” The belief that an internal image of God in man makes the offering of material images superfluous had antecedents in Stoic philosophy,31 but unlike the Stoics, Clement makes his argument turn on the role of the Logos in a specifically Christian sense. Invoking the language of votive offerings, he says, “We have become a consecrated offering to God for Christ’s sake,” implying that the faithful are like holy paintings, an argument used in the Acts of John half a century earlier. There exists in the Christian an ideal inner image to which he must strive to conform. Further, Clement enlarges on this theology of the interior image. “Your Olympian Zeus, the image of an image, greatly out of harmony with truth, is the senseless work of Attic hands. For the image of God is his Word, the genuine Son of Mind, the Divine word, the archetypal light of light, and the image of the Word is the true man, the mind which is in man, who is therefore said to have been made ‘in the image and likeness of God.’” Finally, in the prayer with which he climaxes his treatise, Clement returns to this allegory of the votive image. Jesus is said to pray for the faithful, saying, “I desire to restore you according to the original model, that you may become also like Me. I anoint you with the unguent of faith, by which you throw off corruption, and show you the naked form of righteousness by which you ascend to God.” The “unguent” and the “nakedness” allude to the stripping

and anointing of baptism. This doctrine of a spiritual icon within the Christian appeared already in the Acts of John and it reappears in various forms in later authors, including Origen, Chrysostom, and Gregory Nazianzenus. To the Greek religious mind the paintings may not have been exactly what we today class as pornography, so much as invocations of a divine blessing on the fertility of the marriage bed. Clement, however, was not looking for excuses for such practices.32 The Various Guises of Isis The most powerful goddess one could invoke for blessings of fertility and child-bearing was Isis, who was called Aphrodit in Egypt, and who reached the peak of her pan-Mediterranean popularity in the third century AD.33 Our discussion of the great goddess will start with the Karanis discovery of a charming wall painting of the Horus/Harpocrates in the lap of Isis in House B50, which has to be interpreted in its domestic,family context. (Chapter Three, Figure 9, Isis lactans Mural painting of Karanis House B50, site photograph of 1925) (Chapter Three, Figure 10 Isis lacctans, Mural painting of Karanis House B50 watercolor in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, Ann Arbor MI). Found in 1925, it rapidly became the “star” of the excavations of the University of Michigan. It was dated to the fourth century only by the general context of the Karanis neighborhood in which it was found, but this dating is reinforced by its place in our group of paintings of the contour style. To anyone from a European background the painting immediately suggested the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child, which happens to be by far the commonest subject in European art. The not inconsiderable gap between this mother and the Virgin Mary in archaeological evidence lies at the center of our investigation. The unfortunate disintegration of the original Karanis mural after its discovery left only a couple photographs and the excavation watercolor as documentation, and the watercolor rapidly replaced the archaeology. New information on the painting, however, has emerged from two directions. A painstaking review of the site record by Thelma K. Thomas has supplied the down-to-earth details of the domestic context in textile remains and household furnishings,34 and Rondot’s identification of a seemingly insignificant panel-painting fragment, Tebtynis 227, as part of the composition of Isis lactans from House B50 supplies unexpected information on the working methods of the painte (Chapter Three, figure 11 Isis Lactans, Tebtunis fragment 227, photo N. Muller). When assembled the evidence is of singular importance for the study of that great goddess in the last phase of her cult. Figure 12 +13 (la 14 e la 15 non esistono più) The sad, twice-excavated fragment, measures 10.3 x 3.2 x 1.4 99

Isis Lactans, mural of Karanis House B50, watercolor in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, Ann Arbor MI. [Museum photo.] Isis Lactans,Tebtunis fragment 227 [10.3 x 3.2 cm.] ca. 300 AD. Photo. by N. Muller [Muller photo.]

Isis Lactans, mural of Karanis House B50, watercolor in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, Ann Arbor MI. [Museum photo.]

cm, is highly desiccated and worm eaten, as Muller observes, and has lost at least fifty percent of its paint surface; yet the surviving paint is quite well preserved. There is a light grey outlining, perhaps an under-paint, around the hand, followed by red-brown ochre wash on top that exhibits little or no paint buildup. It is an aqueous-based paint, not encaustic. In the center of the fragment one observes five fingers of a right hand holding a breast and alongside it a child’s forearm with a bracelet around his wrist. It must first be emphasized how exact is the correspondence between the Tebtynis fragment and the Karanis mural painting. When Choimet’s drawing of the fragment is laid on the photograph of the Karanis mural painting, the lines correspond perfectly: the spread of Isis’ open right hand, the angle of Harpocrates’ arm alongside her little finger, and even the finger-tips of Isis’ left hand are all in exactly the same positions in the two images. they seem to be close. Most strikingly, the stylistic trick of outlining Harpocrates’ arm with an extra white line around the heavier black contour is identical in the two versions. This is a typical device of the late Karanis style that we have characterized as “the contour style,” with its shadow-less simplicity and its firm curving black lines of contrasting weights. The line-forline correspondence might justify our concluding that the very painter responsible for the panel-painting in Tebtynis

should be credited with the mural painting in Karanis, which is located on the other side of Lake Moeris, some 70 kilometers from Tebtynis. The discrepancies between the photographic record and the watercolor copy will be discussed in connection with the goddess’ throne (see below p. xxx), but the close relationship of mural and panel painting must be examined first. The best documented painter of the Fayum, Theophilus of Philadelphia, known in four papyri and subject of a careful study by Nowicka,35 worked in both murals and pinakes. In house decoration he worked in the Alexandrian style of decoration in zones with paneled vaults, for which he submitted drawings (paradeigmata). Unemployed after finishing a commission, he sought work in panel-paintings in encaustic (the document mentions wax from Bousiris and a tool called thermastris, for heating the wax).36 Tempera, not encaustic is the medium of our corpus paintings, but Theophilus in the late third century BC preceded the introduction of tempera. Our evidence of copying stroke for stroke in two different media is new. It is unlikely that the artist of the Tebtynis fragment carried his panel-painting itself to Karanis, since the owner-patron in Tebtynis presumably had a use for it there, but he may well have carried drawings like Theophilus. In the Renaissance, Muller points out, an artist could 100

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Isis Lactans, mural of Karanis House B50. Site photograph of 1925, Ann Arbor MI., Kelsey Museum of Archaeology [Museum photo.]

reproduce exact copies by a technique called “pouncing,” that is by making a line tracing and perforating the tracing, then placing the perforated drawing in place and dusting it with carbon to produce an exact scale copy in broken lines. This technique, however, is undocumented in Antiquity. We then suppose that our Fayum artist, like Theophilus, had a portfolio of working drawings, which he copied, or that he worked from memory, a solution preferred by Whitehouse (in personal communication). The traveling artist might well have been known for this particular Isis composition and might have been asked to reproduce it by various patrons around the Fayum. In further evidence, Thomas reports that other painting fragments from Karanis House 124, now in the Ann Arbor Museum of Archaeology, include a face of Harpocrates with his finger to his mouth, as in B50, and the leg of a rider that replicates that of the equestrian in B50.37 Copying evidently was a wide practice, by which one might multiply popular images at private demand.38 In House B50, to the left of Isis, Rondot interpreted the equestrian figure as one of a pair of Dioscuri flanking the goddess on either side in a large niche composition of a kind of triptych format. This reconstruction, however, is not consistent with the archaeology. Thomas has observed that the horseman is drawn on a smaller scale, on a different base line, with a different background color, and employing a different plaster mix. The figures of Isis and the horseman were located on adjacent walls, not exactly a niche, and there is no trace of Rondot’s second Dioscurus. The single rider is obviously a distinct painting campaign, prompted by a separate act of devotion not necessarily associated with Isis, except in proximity. The placement of the Isis had made this particular corner of the house suitable for further religious use, a practice we have seen before. We prefer to identify the equestrian figure as Heron, to whom we will return. The Isis of the Karanis B50 represents an important moment in the imagery of Isis as this seems to be the very latest surviving Isis lactans. The image is quite remarkable. On an unusual cushioned, high-backed throne sits a fragile woman with small shoulders. She has a dignified bearing and a straight Greek nose. She wears the knot of her chiton, the Isis knot, on her right shoulder (a Greek fashion) and her chiton slips in such a way as to expose both breasts in a special display of maternal generosity. But her child, as usual in this iconography, does not actually take advantage of her generosity but makes his habitual self-identifying, contemplative gesture, placing his right forefinger to his mouth. Like the London Harpocrates in a Naos, the mother and child have great wide eyes with huge pupils and wet lashes with a faraway look, gazing a little over and to the side of the viewer. The child smiles contentedly and Isis too, in a manner which Tran Tam Tinh has characterized as “coquettish,” a term singularly

inappropriate.39 Although it is unusual for gods to smile, among the gods and goddesses in our corpus of paintings, Harpocrates is smiling on Berlin 19644, as he does often in the terracottas, and the anonymous youth seated on a throne in Cairo JE 31569 is smiling rather beatifically. Tinh’s interpretation of flirtatious intentions must be set 102

aside as the mistake of the male gaze, for Isis in this context is obviously a fertility goddess and therefore her intended audience in this domestic location was women and girls, not men. Lactation is cause of anxiety for women, a testing of their fertility and their motherliness. Isis’ milk was supposed to be miraculous and vessels of her milk figured in her temple worship. In the painting she shows both breasts to display her divine fecundity. Her smile shows her delight in nursing, as if it were a pleasure that she wants to share with her supplicants. While Bolman has rightly warned against a sentimental reading of the image, 40 the Karanis Isis Lactans is very much a painting about touching: Isis’ open right hand squeezes her breast to present it to her child (and to the spectator) demonstrating her fertility. For his part the child presses his finger to his lip in reverence, and with his left hand he grips his mother’s left thumb, reinforcing their connectedness. Meanwhile, with her left hand, Isis hugs him warmly around the belly. The painting includes the maximum number of touching gestures possible between mother and child, which must be taken as appropriate behavior for a goddess of love and fertility. It is warm and intimate maternal behavior, and her contented smile suggests that Isis enjoyed being a mother. Women could touch this painting in passing on their daily rounds in House B50; they could offer a flower, light incense or a lamp, while pronouncing a prayer. This is a cultic image in a domestic context and a novel development in Egyptian art. The representation of Isis nursing does not appear until the Late Period of Egyptian art, ca. 700 BC (Chapter Three, Figure 16, Isis lactans statuette after 600 BCCairo Egyptian Museum EA 67186.. In Ptolemaic times, on an elegant golden statuette in Berlin, an enthroned Isis offers her left breast to Harpocrates, who is seated on her left knee, with his finger to his mouth.41 Karanis B50 repeats this fixed iconography, but from the worshipper’s point of view everything has changed. The fact that Isis is no longer a statue of gold locked away in a granite block to be reached only by the priests on fixed schedule, but has become a human presence accessible at home by women and girls, and this changes the nature of the human-divine conversation. The medium of the painted panel also changes the tone of that conversation. We have entered the era of post-temple paintings of the divinities. Panel-painting was an intimate and non-Egyptian medium that transformed the Egyptian pantheon even when leaving the iconography canonically intact. Made warm and familiar, the divine Isis has literally entered into the family circle. In the process she has, to a certain extent, been laicized or secularized. She wears the jewelry customary also among other goddesses of our corpus as they enter into the company of the aristocratic women of the secular Egyptian world, who in

fact were sponsoring these panel-paintings. Her bracelet and the rings on her fingers are not clearly defined in the painting, but her necklace, which alternates emeralds with gold beads, can be paralleled in second century mummy portraits, as for example in the Metropolitan Museum of Art 1909 09.181.7, of AD 120-4042. The Kor of Karanis (Ann Arbor 28807) has a similar necklace. It should also be observed that while the copious hair on Isis’ shoulders is a divine attribute, the tight corkscrew curls across her forehead are a contemporary coiffure among the elite women of the Fayum. In the larger picture of religion in Late Antiquity this is a decisive moment. Temple decoration has ceased. The image of Isis nursing continued in use in official circles in the coinage of Alexandria in the fourth century, well beyond Constantine’s initial steps to establish Christian cult,43 so that, at the end of the century, we find her appearing in Karanis in our panel-paintings and murals. One may ask what the reception was for this nursing mother among the Egyptian population, who were now a Christian majority, in their domestic shrines and on their coinage. The discovery of a new painting of Mary nursing the Christ Child (c. 600 AD) in the exquisite murals of Anby Bishai, the Red Monastery, will require that we return to this question below. It is in the period of the panel-paintings that the cult of Isis became truly international, as her cult assimilated the worship of the other great goddesses of the ancient world. It is certainly significant that Isis is the most popular of the goddesses in our corpus, with a count of probably seven panels, not including her syncretisms with Hathor and Aphrodit . (Chapter Three, Figure 17 Isis, Assiout 82 Second century AD.) (Chapter Three, Figure 20 Isis lactans, Tebtunis fragment 229. Second Century AD, Choimet drawing.) (Chapter Three, Figure 2 Sobek with halo of Helios, Berlin terracotta) In addition to the two fragments of Isis Lactans (Teb. 227 and 229), Isis appears in our corpus in the paintings of Assiout 82, Kellis, the J.P. Getty Museum of Malibu, to which one should probably add the fragmentary enthroned goddesses of Tebtynis 212 and 216. Figure 21 e 22 (la 18 non esiste più) Figure 23? For the scholarly discussion it has generated and for the quantity of information it contains, by far the most important Isis of our corpus is the J. Paul Getty Museum painting in Malibu, in association with its mate Serapis. (Chapter Three, 31 Isis, Malibu 74.AP.22) (Chapter Three, 32 Serapis, Malibu 74.AP.21) This is one of the most puzzling and most rewarding pieces in our study, taking us to the heart of the cultic practices associated with paintings in Late Antiquity, situated at the border between pagan and Christian worship. Besides the Malibu pair of paintings (discussed below), the paintings of Assiut and Kellis most probably also included representations of her consort Serapis, according to Ron103

Isis Lactans, Tebtunis fragment 229, second century AD. Photo. by N. Muller [Muller photo.]

Isis, Assiout College Museum no. 82, second century AD [19.1 x 10.2 x 0.7 cm.]. Photo. by N. Muller [Muller photo.]

the earthly couple.”45 Doors and their Mounting in Shrines or Triptychs One of the most distinct features of the group of panel-paintings that we have assembled is the large number of “door” panels, that is, pieces equipped with pintels along one edge for insertion into a hinge mechanism. Fully nine of our panels are so designed and Rondot argues that one of the fragments from Tebtynis (216) should be added to the list, making ten out of sixty. Doors close and open, hide and reveal, activating an otherwise static and immobile system. Understanding the functioning of the doors takes us to the heart of the cultic use of the panels. The matter is rather complex, however, and its unraveling involves three very different cultic picture-viewing “templates,” as we have called them. Moreover, from the start, the triptych discussion has faced the appearance of the self-same hinge mechanism in Christian icons. In Weitzmann’s corpus of the 61 icons of the sixth to tenth centuries at the Monastery of St. Catherine on Mt. Sinai, his catalogue includes twelve pintled door panels and six center panels designed to receive the pintled doors. It seems important to discuss their continuity or discontinuity with the pagan material. Since doors can be painted inside, outside, or both, the complexities multiply. While the other frame types of the panel-paintings were suited to traditional picture display situations, whether hanging by cord from a hook in the wall, or resting in an elevated niche, the mounting of works with door or wing panels required a situation in which the images could be “activated.” In opening and closing, doors conceal and reveal. To reconstruct this activation requires reconstructing the mise en scène of worship in Late Antiquity. Almost a century ago, in the earliest scholarly discussion of the subject, Rudolf Pagenstecher proposed that the delicate and refined pair of paintings of Armed Gods (Berlin 17957), were the wings of a triptych whose center panel was lacking.46 Having located a limestone relief panel in Cairo with virtually the same constellation of figures, he was able to speculate on the identity of the missing central figure, a speculation which Rondot has now carried to a logical solution that explains both the Berlin panels and a series of related panels of the same armed gods, protector divinities of the Syro-Arabian caravans, who were being newly integrated with the Egyptian pantheon. The historiography of the door, or wing, panels reflects the complexity of the archaeological evidence. Pagenstecher’s hypothesis had situated the Berlin panels midway between the triptychs that appear in Roman mural paintings (e.g. Casa delle Vestali, Pompeii) and the medieval triptych (e.g. the Louvre tenth century Harbaville triptych in ivory). Widely used in Middle Byzantine art, the triptych was adopted by

dot.44 They are the primeval couple of Egyptian myth. Török remarks on the symbolic value of male-female couples: “From the Imperial period the depiction of the married couple was rich in positive connotations, on an elementary level standing for civic order en miniature while mythological couples symbolized ethical values and presented an ideal image of 104

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Isis (?) Tebtunis fragment 216. Second century AD (23.6 x 9.7 x .9 cm.). Photo. by N. Muller [Muller photo.]

Isis Enthroned, Tebtunis fragment 212. (19.9 x 11.3 x 1.4 cm.). Photo. by N. Muller [Muller photo.]

the Franciscans as their preferred altarpiece format and became one of the most popular templates of European panelpainting, enjoying a wide success in the grand altarpieces of the end of the Middle Ages, which amalgamated painting with sculpture. Pagenstecher’s exciting hypothesis, boldly spanning the millennia, was unfortunately very sparsely documented, and the Sinai icons, which would have supplied the early Byzantine link for his chain of evidence, were unpublished until the studies of the Soterious in 1956-58 and Weitzmann in 1976. Byzantinists in general have shown remarkably little curiosity about the question of the origins of the triptych.47 On the other hand, historians of the late medieval development of the triptych have understandably regarded the problem of origins as beyond their area of responsibility. The subject attracted new attention in 1978 when David L. Thomson proposed that the Malibu panels, along with a portrait which the J. Paul Getty Museum had acquired at the same time, constituted the earliest surviving complete triptych, and he included the Berkeley Armed Gods panels as further triptych evidence.48 L.H. Corcoran opened the possibility that the Malibu doors might be interpreted either as elements of a triptych, or as doors of a “wooden shrine.”49 In 2000 Klaus Parlasca ruled out the triptych option altogether, proposing that the Malibu panels must be interpreted as the doors of a “naiskos,” that is a shrine for carrying a statuette of a god, placing it in a very particular Egyptian religious category.50 Notwithstanding, Reiner Sörries in 2003 adopted and expanded the Pagenstecher hypothesis, incorporating it into the title of his book Das Malibu Triptychon, in which he interpreted all pintle-hinged panels as triptych wings.51 Rondot, however, finds no evidence to connect any of the pintle-panels of the corpus with triptych constructions. The problem is not entirely solved and the J. Paul Getty Museum still proposes a triptych arrangement, in spite of recent carbon dating that places the center panel over a century later than the wings. Rondot’s naiskos interpretation complicates the picture by re-identifying the divine couple as agathodemones, protective divinities, with whom the donors identified themselves. Rondot’s reconstruction, however, positions the Isis and Serapis in such a way, that they face away from each other, which seems to fly in the face of the strict etiquette of Egyptian iconography. In the seven other instances of paired gods in our corpus, the two gods interact with and acknowledge one another’s presence (Alexandria 22978; Berlin 15978: Berlin 15979: Brussels E 7409; Cairo JE 38250; Etampes; Moscow 5786). The basic problem is that Rondot’s interpretation attempts to read the Getty naos panels as if they belonged to a triptych viewing system. “L’iconographie de telles meubles (naos fermé par des vantaux) n’était intelligible que lorsque les différentes figures 106

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Isis, Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum, 74.AP.22, ﬁrst century AD. [Museum photo.]

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Serapis, Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum, 74.AP.21, ﬁrst century AD. [Museum photo.]

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Naos Shrine from Temple of Isis in Philae, 170-116 BC, Paris, Musée du Louvre, D30. [Museum photo.] Reconstruction by T. Mathews of Naos of Getty Isis and Serapis, with statuette of Harpocrates of the Walters Art Museum, no. 54193. [Jaca Book artist from Mathews’ drawing]

(centrale et latérale) étaient visibles en même temps.” 52 The naos and triptych, however, were two very different image viewing systems which should not be confused. The pintelhinged door is represented by nine examples in the corpus, including three pairs: Berkeley Armed God 6-21384 Berkeley Armed God 6-21385 Berlin 17957, left, Armed Gods Berlin 17957, right, Armed Gods Berlin 19644 Harpocrates on a Lotus Blossom Cairo JE 31570 Dromedary God Malibu 74AP 21 Serapis Malibu 74.AP.22 Isis New Haven 1929.288 Nike (Tebtynis 216 Isis) Figure 28 + suo dettaglio / 29 + 19 /30 + 3 dettagli Because it has become the focus of debate, we will begin with the instance of the Malibu Getty doors, which may serve both as entry into the complex problems of the door panels, and to inquire into the meaning of the most august pair of Egyptian gods in their rather exceptional iconography here. When the J. Paul Getty Museum acquired the Isis and Serapis in 1974, they acquired as well a portrait panel of a man which was alleged to form a triptych with the two door panels. The most decisive evidence for rejecting the triptych reconstruction, however, is the shape of the doors. Not only is the combined width of the two doors two centimeters more than the center panel, but the doors are not rectangular; they are trapezoidal. While the Isis panel is 20.1 cm across the bottom, it is only 19.2 cm along the top edge, and the Serapis

is 19 cm across the bottom, but 18 cm along the top.53 This means that if they were disposed as doors of a triptych, the panels would close with a gap of 1.9 cm at the top center. One might brush this aside as an accident of sloppy carpentry, but the carpentry of these panels is very careful. The vertical planks of the doors are a mere centimeter thick and yet they are joined by dowels 4 or 5 mm in diameter inserted within this one-centimeter thickness. Such refinements of tooling do not allow for sloppy mis-measurements. The panels were therefore not made for a triptych but for a particular kind of Egyptian shrine with sloping sides, a naos as was Parlasca’s conclusion. The two framing structures, the naos and the triptych, employ pintle doors in two very different situations for very different viewings. The naos places the doors on the front of a box in which the image of a god is to be transported, while the triptych places the doors to either side of a centre panel-painting whose subject they expand and elaborate on. These cultic structures are physically irreconcilable, in that one cannot interchange trapezoidal doors with rectangular ones. At the same time, these structures are profoundly characteristic of the two very different religious cultures to which they belonged and in which they must be interpreted. The naos is tied to the ancient Egyptian religious use of idol worship of a portable figure of the god, while the triptych belongs to a Hellenistic and Christian use of a folding painting, the implications of which we have to pursue. In many ways the distinction lies at the very core of ancient religious observances. The portable naos, or better naiskos “little shrine,” is a smal110

ler and more convenient replica of the grand naos, which was the holiest inner sanctum of the temple in which dwelt the god or goddess to whom the temple was dedicated. In Egyptian architecture the inner sanctum chamber is a massive, monolithic granite cubicle, such as that in the Louvre (D30), from the Temple of Isis in Philae, attributed to Ptolemy VIII Evergetes (170-116 BC), which is 2.35 M high.54 (Chapter Three, Figure 33, Naos shrine, Louvre D30) Its battered or sloping walls echo the traditional profile of the grand outer walls of the temple building itself. It was the temple-withinthe-temple, the inner sanctum which no ordinary mortal ever reached. Surprisingly, the ritual or liturgy conducted in this most sacred and secret space is abundantly documented and has been copiously studied. The text of the ritual was inscribed and illustrated, step by step, on the walls of the temple of Osiris in Abydos, erected by Setis I and Rameses II (ca. 1290-1213 BC), and it was copied in the Berlin Papyrus 3055 and elsewhere.55 The security of the god within the block of stone was paramount, and while the doors of the Louvre naos have disappeared, the marks from chiseling away the locks and hinges attest how powerful was the hardware of bronze that secured the sacred presence.56 Before dawn the priest arrived, sprinkling the area with holy water to purify it. Strictly speaking there was only one priest and he was the king (or Pharaoh) who was the god’s representative, charged with preserving the harmony of the universe; but when necessary he might delegate his chores to lesser priests. Reading the ritual, lighting candles, breaking the seal, he opened the door at dawn and revealed the god. To Horus, god of the dawn, for

example, he would pray: “Rise upon the earth as you did when you came forth from noun! May your rays illumine the world! Life to the gods who manifest your beauty; they are your children of the Orient.”57 The god’s statue, which was identified very literally with the god himself, was then taken out of the naos by the dedicated priestly staff. The priests themselves were dressed in white linen, they bathed four times a day and shaved their heads lest they should defile the god’s shrine with so much as a single human hair. The Pharaoh beheld the god face-to-face to offer him bread and trays of food and drink. These were left in the adjacent room of the offerings. After the god’s meal was concluded with incense and libations, the Pharaoh and his family adjourned to surrounding chapels for their own meal. Then the god was dressed, replacing his old garments (of the previous day) with new robes of many colors (white against his enemies, blue to hide his face, green for health, red for protection). Finally he was restored to his sanctuary, and locked and sealed for the night. The statue was the “real presence” of the god, to whose life and well-being the enormous temple was dedicated, and whose presence blessed the entire land. The people never visited the god in this inner sanctum. Instead, the god visited the people in reduced versions of the naoi, the portable naiskoi, “little shrines.” These were made of wood and mounted on poles and carried about on festive occasions, for example Louvre N503 504. (Chapter Three, Figure 34, Terracotta of Priests Carrying Naiskos, Louvre N503-504) The carrying of the naiskos is represented in sculpture and terracottas of Roman date.58 Because these naiskoi had to imitate real temple architecture, they were commonly made 111

Armed God, Berkeley 6-21385, third century AD. Photo N. Muller. [Muller photo.]

112

113

Equestrian Caravan Guardian, Cairo, Egyptian Museum JE31570. Photo by N. Muller. [Muller photo.]

with sloping sides and therefore the front doors had a sloping, trapezoidal design. Their purpose, however, was not only to protect the god in transit, but to present the god to the people at special moments. This solves the problem of the fitting of the Getty door panels; the slight inclination of the hinge sides of the doors was intended to accommodate the shape of the shrine. This placement also solves the problem of the gaze of the Malibu gods, which Rondot and Parlasca did not explain. The recent exhibition Portes du Ciel, at the Louvre directed by Marc Etienne, took the doors of the naiskoi as its point of departure for introducing the theology of ancient Egypt. The principal image of the naiskos was not its painted doors but the figurine of marble or bronze contained inside, which usually out-lasted the portable wooden shrine itself. These figurines are much prized by collectors and museums and they are referred to by Egyptologists as “votives” in a very different sense of the term from the Rouse usage in the Hellenistic world, which we have been following. When the doors of the shrine are decorated – which is by no means universal – the iconography has certain set conventions. On the exterior, the front doors of the shrine most often illustrate the dedicant’s (i.e. the Pharaoh’s) worship. For example, on the right door of Louvre E605-N504 (570-525 BC), King Amasis kneels to offer a figurine of Maat (“world order”) to the falcon-headed god Sopdou (a manifestation of Horus) on the left. Amasis and Sodpou face each other with their backs toward the hinges of their panels.59 A parallel situation is observed in the decoration of the naiskos doors of the Staatliche Sammlung Ägyptischer Kunst in Munich (Munich no. 1384), which are very helpfully painted both on the outside and the inside.60 On the outside of the doors we find the jackal-god Anubis on the right, worshipping Horus on the left panel. It is the god’s presence that governs the interior iconography so that the sacred ibis (bird of knowledge) and royal falcon of Horus would be seen gazing at each other exactly the way the god saw them from within the naos. When the doors were opened this orderly arrangement gave way to the revelation and veneration of the god-statuette. The statuette was removed for the purpose. The removal of the statue for cult is the essential action of the liturgy of this image template. The art historian, then, must not try to reduce these doors to a static triptych composition. Only when the Munich doors are closed do the birds stand in the proper relationship to one another, and that is primarily for the benefit of the god who is gazing upon them from inside, not for the human spectator outside. This explains how the Getty doors worked. When they were closed, the human spectator saw from the exterior only the blank outside face of the door panels. Blank exteriors are not uncommon on the naiskoi.61 (Chapter Three, Figure 35, Mathews reconstruction of Naos of Getty with Walters no. 114

54193) The left (Serapis) door, that is the more honorable right side to the god within, had a rabbet for easy opening (as reconstructed by Rondot from the placement of dowel holes).62 The god dwelling inside (Rondot assumes a statuette of Horus-Harpocrates) “saw” the Serapis image to his right and the Isis image to his left, and the god and goddess turned their gaze to acknowledge one another. Though no connection can be established with the Malibu naiskos, bronze statuettes of the god Horus-Harpocrates have survived, such as the silver inlaid bronze statuette in the Baltimore Walters Art Museum (accession 541983). Together with their divine child, the three constituted a triad in perpetual and secret communion among themselves. Opening the doors, left and then right, the priest interrupted the communion of the ancient parent gods and the naos literally gave birth to the child from his chamber within as the priest brought the figure of the boy-god out to offer him the temporal worship that he required. This was the revelation for which the naiskos was constructed and decorated. It was more than a static picture for one’s reading of a message; it was a tableau vivant in the sense of a combination sculpture-painting that came to life. Placing the statue on a table before the naiskos chamber, the priest performed the necessary rites of dressing, feeding, and incensing the god. This is how worship was conducted. When finished, and when and the sacred aretalogies had been recited to the god’s honor, then the priest closed the doors again and the divine harmony of the world was restored. The 115

Armed God, Berkeley 6-21384, third century AD. Photo by N. Muller [Muller photo.]

mystery of Isis and Serapis unfolded for the revelation and the cult, and then refolded for the security of the sacred image. It is only when the naiskos has been disassembled in its modern after-life in a museum that spectators can enjoy the eternal vision that Horus used to have of his divine parents, gazing reverently and affectionately at one another. They pose as the celestial ideal of the married couple, as Török observed. The triptych painting, as we will see, has an analogous activation but without the statuette. With gods who endured for millennia one should not be surprised if more than one layer of meaning might be detected in a given image. Major and minor themes must be distinguished. As in our study of the Harpocrates-Dionysus, the corpus of surviving panel-paintings is large enough to supply us with several versions of Isis and Serapis by which to measure the iconography of the Getty couple. One must begin with the largest dimensions of the subject. Serapis was the Ptolemaic version of Osiris, but one must not imagine Serapis had swallowed Osiris. Referred to as Wennefer meaning the “eternally incorruptible,” he remained the primeval god of fertility and resurrection. Though murdered by Seth, he was restored by Isis who then conceived his son Horus and was the primary Egyptian mother-goddess. The ancient Osiris was not replaced by, but continued, by the Hellenistic Serapis. The first and most important layer of meaning in the Getty paintings is therefore the gods’ fertility in generating Horus-Harpocrates, the god of the Dawn, and this generation is symbolized by the naiskos itself housing the statuette of the child emerging from between his parents. This symbolism is supplemented by a neglected detail in the iconography of Isis, namely the black staff with yellow markings placed to her left. Among her many syncretisms in the Greco-Roman period, one should note that Isis also took on an identification with Nemesis, goddess of justice and retribution.63 The measuring staff Rondot identifies as the staff of Nemesis herself in the Nemesis with Harpocrates (Copenhagen 685),64 but fails to notice it here when assigned to Isis. It may also be the staff of the British Museum’s Goddess in Mourning (BM 1975.7-28.1). Nemesis the Goddess of Justice had the task of measuring human conduct and Isis assumed the duty of chastising violations of marital law. The audience of these paintings understood the difference between the model couple of Isis and Osiris-Serapis and the licentious Ar s and Aphrodit . Isis and Serapis were bringers of matrimonial blessings. The second most important layer of meaning in the iconography of the Getty Malibu couple is found in the remarkable abundance of grain, leaf, and flowers that emerge from their hair. They are unmistakably farmer gods, patrons of the fertility of the earth. The three other Isis paintings with which Rondot compares Isis (Assiout 82; Kellis; and Tebtunis 216),

share the insignia of her headdress (solar disk with uraeus flanked by cow horns and sprigs of grain), but the Getty Isis also sprouts papyrus-like leaves and pink flowers tied with a ribbon in her hair. Serapis has clusters of olive leaves on his head in addition to his usual modius, that is the wheat measure. This abundance of vegetation is quite unique and must not be passed over. The gods are patrons of the black soil of the Fayum. The ancient Osiris was not replaced by but continued by the Hellenistic Serapis, and Isis oversaw the distribution of the produce around the Mediterranean. Rondot has proposed another line of interpretation of the Getty pair as Agathod mones, appealing to a practice in 116

size here that it is only in the Christian material that one can demonstrate triptychs in the proper understanding of the term. The term must be defined along with the technology to which it refers. From the Greek verb ptycho “I fold,” comes the expression pinax triptychos meaning a three-fold panelpainting. The Roman mural paintings that are often cited as triptych evidence in reality show a central pinax fitted with blank protective doors, for which the Greeks had the more accurate term pinakes tethyromenoi, “doored paintings, or panel-paintings equipped with doors.” The critical inscriptional evidence is found in the Delos inventory of offerings, anath mata, entered by the registrars of the temple treasuries in the year 156-155 BC.69 The island of Delos was the ancient shrine of the birthplace of Apollo housing the treasury of the allies of Athens, the Amphytrionic League. In the representations of the so-called “triptychs” in Roman mural paintings, the wings close to protect a center image, but they do not expand or develop the image. They do not constitute three-part paintings.70 Ehlich enumerates five wall paintings in Rome and sixteen in Pompeii that depict folding panels, but none show images on the doors.71 Sande too concludes that the doors shown on Roman “triptychs” were unadorned and served simply to protect the image in the center.72 A recent study of Ingeborg Schreibler pursues the iconography of a set of the most legible of the Roman “triptychs,” those in the murals of the Oecus of the Casa Omerica of Pompeii.73 The subjects on the center panels are only tangentially religious – scenes of revelry, for example, or music making, or espousals – their imagery deriving from stereotypes familiar in Greek red-figure vase painting. The scenes do not exhibit divinities who might be the subjects of veneration and cult, as in our corpus paintings or in the Christian icons. These Roman themes of celebrations did not require further elaboration onto flanking panels and the side panels were left blank. The evidence seems to demonstrate that the true triptych, in the sense of a three-part folding painting, was unknown in Rome and was invented at some time between the Roman paintings of the Augustan age and the sixth century AD, in the period documented by our panel-paintings from Egypt. The Christian triptych wings exhibit numerous points of dependence on models provided by the pagan paintings of doors for naoi. The question is how this transition took place from one genre to the other. The early Christian triptych evidence is in the collection of the Monastery of St. Catherine at Sinai, in Egypt, to which one must add a little wing panel in the Ashmolean.74 The dating of the icons rests on Weitzmann’s stylistic groupings, which one accepts until a more satisfactory hypothesis is developed.75 The numbers of early Christian triptychs are impressive: Weitzmann’s Sinai icons down to the tenth century amount to 61 pieces, of which 18 are triptych wing

Roman Egypt of placing a pair of good genii on door posts, especially of tombs.65 This is a difficult thesis to support in this situation. While it is possible conceptually to think of the Malibu door panels as equivalently doorposts of the naiskos inside, it is not a door for human passage. Agathod mones are usually given serpent form, which is obviously not the case here. In addition, the partner of Serapis as Agathod mon should be Hermouthis, not Isis. In the ribbon encircling Serapis’ forehead, Rondot detects a hitherto unnoticed sixpointed star which occurs sometimes in mummy portraits as a sign of the subject’s consecration to Serapis. On the Getty panel this may indeed be a personal initial by which the dedicant of the naiskos wanted to link himself to the panel as a special devotee of Serapis, but unfortunately he has not given us further clues of his identity or his devotion, and by itself this hexagonal star cannot re-identify the great gods as mere good luck charms. The pair remain primarily the great gods of fertility, morality, and resurrection. The Rondot Agathod mones hypothesis raises the further question of who worshipped with these cultic images and on what occasions. The patrons named in the inscriptions on the panel-paintings in our corpus are not priests but private individuals of some standing in the community expressing individual needs. The patrons supposed by Clement of Alexandria’s account, are simply citizens with a background in the Greek gymnasium, expressing their love of sexual pleasure. A pair of epigrams in the sixth book of the Greek Anthology reflects the every-day life of the dedicants. In epigram 231 a merchant named Damis makes an offering (anath ma) to Isis to thank her for rescue from a storm at sea and to request rescue as well from poverty.66 Along with his prayer, he offers a little round cake, a pair of white geese, figs sprinkled with nard, grapes, and frankincense. In the Hellenistic world, Isis was the inventor of navigation, but the curious menu of Damis’ offering is taken from the cult of Aphrodit .67 Isis was the goddess as well of love and beauty. In the Greek Anthology VI, 60, a girl named Pamphil offers Isis a lock of blonde hair on coming of age.68 Decidedly, in the Hellenistic world the cult of Isis could address a wide range of very personal situations.

THE TRANSITION FROM NAOI TO TRIPTYCHS From among the nine examples of door panels in our corpus, only on the Getty doors do the gods turn away from the pintle hinge. In the other pairs of matching doors and in the single door panels of the Correction: Equestrian Dromedary God, Cairo JE31570, and the Nike of New Haven 1929.288, the figures turn to face the pintle hinge, and this is the orientation of Christian triptych door figures. It is important to empha117

St. Theodore, triptych door panel. Sinai, Monastery of St. Catherine, icon no. B13. Sixth or seventh century AD. [Princeton, Weitzmann Sinai Archive] Elijah triptych door, Sinai, Monastery of St. Catherine, icon no. B17. Seventh century. [Princeton, Weitzmann Sinai Archive]

For example, Sinai B13 (6th or 7th c.), shows an armed St. Theodore striding to the right toward the pintel edge. (Chapter Three, Figure 37. St Theodore triptych door panel Sinai icon B13.) Similarly the St. Elijah door, B17 (7th c.), shows the prophet striding left toward the pintel edge of his door. (Chapter Three, Figure 38, Elijah triptych door panel, Sinai icon B17) These figures must necessarily be on the inside of the wing panels, where they complemented or expanded the theme of the now missing center panels. St. Theodore may have accompanied the Virgin, as he does on Sinai B3, and Elijah may have faced the transfigured Lord, as he does in the sixth century mosaic of the apse of Sinai. They were parts of three-fold paintings, in which the theme of the center panel was expanded by painting onto the doors. When the Elijah panel was closed, its reverse showed a splendid cross in a rainbow halo of light, so that one gained access to the vision within the triptych by passing through a rainbow of colors on the exterior. In some examples of narrative subjects, the story of the center icon could spill over onto the wings, as on the orphan triptych wing B22, on which the three shepherds belong to a missing Birth of Christ in the center. The triptych wings B19 and B20 divide the story of the Annunciation by putting the Angel Annunciate on the left and the Virgin facing him on the right door; the central panel, now missing, probably carried an enthroned Virgin and Child. In many triptychs, however, the attendant wing figures, whether full-length or half length, are purely static and frontal without a gesture or even a look linking them to the central figure; the relationship is left purely intellectual. On the intact Sinai triptych B42-44 of the ninth or tenth century, equestrian saints flank the scene of the Ascension, but while one turns toward the center panel, the other turns away. The debt of the sixth-seventh century Christian triptychs of Sinai to pagan antecedents in the Egyptian naiskoi is striking.(ChapterThree, Figure 24,Armed Gods, lost door panel, Berlin 17957 [left]) (Chapter Three, Figure 25. Armed

panels and 4 triptych centre panels. The technology is very consistent, and quite different from the Roman “doored paintings” described by Ehlich. The Christian triptych can be illustrated by the little Sinai icon of the Hodegetria (B40) as analyzed in Muller’s drawing. (Chapter Three, Figure 36 Hodegetria triptych icon, Sinai B40 with drawings by N. Muller of attachment of wings) It measures merely 18.1cm x 13.3cm x .5cm and is dated by Weitzmann to the eighth or ninth century.76 The painting has a wooden ledge or lintel fastened across the top with dowels. The right end of the ledge is damaged, but the left side has a hole underneath to receive the pintel of a door panel. The corresponding bottom ledge is missing, but its place is clear in the unpainted border where its dowel fastenings remain. The ledge pieces are thus the frame elements on the top and bottom of the center image, while the door panels, or wing panels, function as framing members on the right and left. Other triptych center panels were identified by Weitzmann (7th c. and later). Significantly, we were not able to identify a single triptych center among our corpus paintings, probable evidence that they were designed for naiskoi shrines rather than triptychs. The three-step assembly sequence of the triptych technology was rather clever: (1.) one affixed the lower ledge to the center panel with dowels; (2.) one then slipped the pintels of the two wing doors into the holes right and left in the ledge; (3.) then one placed the top ledge over the top pintels of the doors and affixed it to the center panel with other dowels. (Muller Fig. XXX) This technology was found so satisfactory, that it was continued for Byzantine ivory triptychs of the tenth and eleventh centuries and Middle Byzantine triptychs in general. The disposition of the figures within the Christian triptychs is very consistent. Unlike the figures of the Malibu and related naiskos assemblies panels which turn away from the pintel edge, the earliest Christian triptych doors show the saints striding toward the pintel hinge of the door, and therefore toward whatever figure occupied the center of the triptych. 118

opportunity of offering incense. Rondot interpreted this as another example of a naiskos shrine but one could never carry such weight balanced on top of a single pole. The Ethiopian Church, however, follows a Coptic tradition of carrying a triptych icon on a pole very like that in the Louvre terracotta; an example dating to 1334-44 from Kebran Gabreel, Godjam,was published by Kraus 1963.79 (Chapter Three, Figure 40, Ethiopian Triptych Icon on a Standard, Monastery of Kebran Gabreel, Ethiopia).This triptych is double-sided, the Mother of God and the Crucifixion, with angels and equestrian saints in two registers on the wings. A second pre-Christian representation of the carrying of a triptych occurs in Rome in the stucchi of the Villa Farnesina. Among the many lively vignettes of Roman religious life involving panel-paintings, Sande found a stucco showing a woman playing the role of the Egyptian priest. She holds up a triptych painting for veneration by two other women. The scene unfolds between a garlanded altar and a garlanded pillar. Sande conjectures, “Very probably she is going to deposit the painting at the foot of the pillar after having shown it to her companions.”80 Although the iconography of the little triptych is not decipherable, it reminds us of the revelatory character of the panel-paintings; they were really packages containing visions meant to be unfolded in order to reveal the vision. One must infer that even in Roman times true triptych pain-

Gods, lost door panel, Berlin 17957 [right]) The door panels of the Armed Gods, Berlin 17957, were not carefully measured before their loss in WW II, but the photographs show that while the left panel (with the goddess) is rectangular, the right panel (with the priest offering incense) is 3 cm narrower at the top than at the bottom, so that together they would form the front doors of a trapezoidal naiskos. When opened, the Armed Gods would have faced the emerging statuette, which may have been 30-40 cm high, judging from the 61 cm height of the doors. (ChapterThree, Figure 27. Reconstruction of naiskos of Berlin Armed Gods, Drawing by Mathews) There are two rare pieces of evidence that some true triptychs existed in pre-Christian use even in the second century AD. Among the Egyptian terracottas, four priests, or pastophoroi, are sometimes shown carrying a naiskos on two poles on their shoulders as they circulated visiting pre-determined stations in the towns. The Statuette of the god is shown within and the doors are omitted.77 However, one terracotta, Louvre E 32666, shows a similar rite in which a single priest carried an open triptych on top of a single pole, as a kind of standard.78 (Chapter Three, Figure 39, Terracotta of Priest carrying a Triptych Icon on a Standard, Louvre terracotta 322666). The scale of the terracotta does not permit identifiable iconography, but one sees shadowy figures on both the center and wings panels. An altar to the left afforded the spectators the 119

Reconstruction of naiskos of Berlin Armed Gods, Drawing by T.F. Mathews [Jaca Book artist from Mathews’ drawing]

tings were sometimes being substituted for naiskoi in popular cult and this may explain the shared compositions between the two genres. There seems to have been an equivalency between the portable naiskos and the portable triptych. The naiskos revealed the god by opening doors and bringing forth his statuette within his portable tempietto, while the triptych revealed the holy personage by simply opening the doors of his painted presence. To the growing Christian population in Egypt, the flat painting was evidently more acceptable for devotion than the sculptural statuettes; indeed cultic statuettes of Christ and the saints are conspicuously absent from the early Christian archaeological record.81 One might call the triptych a compressed naiskos, that did away with the need of a sculpted image. The similarity of the double register Harbaville triptych in the Louvre to Berlin naiskos doors leaves no doubt that the shrines and the triptych came out of a common culture. Both the pagan and Christian doors have double zone compositions of standing figures attending on a central figure. The triptych can be conceptualized as a flattening out of a naiskos. The expansion of these image templates is a particular Late Antique phenomenon.

the spoliation of time. In the large perspective of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages one of the most exciting contributions of our shared research with Rondot has been the discovery, reconstruction, and decipherment of a pair of grand multi-figure paintings which had been virtually lost in their fragmentation and dispersal, but which document the introduction and development of a new picture “template” destined to have a major impact on the history of art. This is the multi-register template of hierarchically sized figures. This format was designed to accommodate a new internationalization of the Egyptian pantheon, according to Rondot’s reading of the fragmentary iconography. While Rondot deliberately limited his investigation to the Egyptological dimensions of this template, one cannot miss the fact that the same format was immediately seized upon by Christians both to organize their official secular hierarchy, and to organize their celestial hierarchy in visual systems which ended up supplanting the pantheons of Egypt and the Hellenistic world. The hierarchic composition of a presiding divinity with attendant divinities, scaled by their importance and arranged on registers is a novel – even revolutionary – way of dealing with new and complex subject matter. It is a quintessentially a Late Antique, un-Classical, way of handling the image. The complexity of the new subject matter is reflected

A Third Image Template: the Presiding Divinity The business of archaeology is the retrieval of the past from 120

Armed Gods, ﬁrst century AD, lost door panel, Berlin, Staatliche Museen Aegyptisches Museum, no. 17957 [left]. Museum archive photo. [Mathews has Museum photo.]

Armed Gods, ﬁrst century AD, lost door panel, Berlin, Staatliche Museen Aegyptisches Museum, no. 17957 [right] Museum archive photo. [Mathews has Museum photo.]

by the count of fifteen pieces in our corpus that Rondot has grouped along with the two larger panel-paintings in his Chapter XI, under the rubric “Gods and Goddesses of non-Egyptian Origin in the Company of Gods Carrying Arms.”82 The theme was diffused not only through grand, multi-register, compositions, but through a multiplication of panels of smaller groups or single divinities.

The larger of the two principal paintings involved has been divided between Cairo JE 31571a and Oxford 1922.238. (Chapter Three, Figure 42, Sobek Presiding over Armed Gods; ca. 300 AD, Drawing by H. Choimet of Cairo Egyptian Museum, no. JE3157a and Oxford Ashmolean 1922.238 [lost]) As Rondot reconstructs its history, it was 65 cm high without its frame and it consisted of seven narrow vertical slats 121

Terracotta of Priest carrying a Triptych Icon on a Standard, ca. second century AD. Paris, Musée du Louvre no. E 32666. [Museum photo.]

Ethiopian Triptych Icon on a Standard. 1334-44 AD, Ethiopia, Monastery of Kebran Gabreel on the Tana Sea [Copy from exhibition catalogue no. 508, Koptische Kunst, Christentum am Nil, Villa Hügel, Essen]

of a grey grime over the surface Muller reports fragments of a bright, colorful painting, which stylistically belongs to a development we have termed the contour style, dating 300350 AD. According to Muller, the axe-wielding god in the lower register wears a red pink ochre garment over a yellow ochre-cream ground. The folds in his garment are bright red ochre. Flesh tones are cream colored, with creases and edges outlined with pale but bold reddish-brown ochre. The central, seated figure wears a red ochre robe, accented with buff and black hems. The background in the upper register is a dark brown-black. While this colorful style is visible in the Cairo fragments, the remaining slats with the better half of principal god can be appreciated only in the black and white Ashmolean photograph. Rostovtzeff in the 1930s attempted to interpret the fragments83 and Sörries returned to the problem in 2003,84

champfered along the exterior edges to fit into a slotted frame. The loss of the frame involved the break-up of the whole painting and three of the slats were entirely lost. Two of the remaining slats were bought by the Cairo Egyptian Museum in 1889 from an unidentified source in the Fayum, though the upper third to half of their height had been lost. The other two slats, comprising the core of the composition, were acquired in 1922 by Sir John Beazley from the MacGregor Collection and donated to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. During World War II however, when much of the museum was moved into storage, the pieces were lost, leaving only their photographic record for study. Meanwhile the two fragments in Cairo, as Muller reports, were “glued to a cloth covered backboard,” but in incorrect order. (Chapter Three, Figure 43 Sobek Presiding over Armed Gods, Cairo Egyptian Museum, JE 31571a detail, ca. AD 300) In spite 122

quoting the passages from the former; but it remained for Rondot and Muller, when inspecting the panels in Cairo in 2004, to realize that the Oxford and Cairo pieces belonged together in a single frame. Having reconstructed their correct sequence, Rondot proposed a new interpretation of the entire complex program.85 The Oxford-Cairo painting presents a commanding two-register composition of a new version of the pantheon of the Nile. Logically, the iconography should be read from the bottom up, starting with the newer attendant gods, for the whole purpose of the painting was to introduce this new set of divinities into the older Nile pantheon. These figures are closest to the viewers physically as well as psychologically in that they are the divine-military guardians of the desert caravan, on whom the viewers relied for the protection of their livelihood. Four-and-a-half figures survive, stepping quickly to the right. The figure furthest left leads a dromedary and carries a spear and a double axe. The gathering of this new pantheon, Rondot realized, was proclaimed in whole or in part in a number of other panels in our corpus of the same or related format and its interpretation involved him in a systematic investigation of the entire set. The fifteen pieces included in this set are the most numerous coherent group within the larger corpus of the sixty paintings under study. Closest to this Oxford-Cairo painting is another presentation of the pantheon in an even bolder use of the new hierarchic template (Cairo JE 31571b). (Chapter Three, Figure 45, Sobek Presiding over Armed Gods, Cairo Egyptian Museum JE31571b, drawing by H. Choimet) The same cast of armed gods are grouped together a third time in a sunken limestone relief panel in the Egyptian Museum of Cairo (Cairo CG 17569), which contains vital information on the iconography of the whole set. (Chapter Three, Figure 41 Sobek Presiding over Armed Gods, limestone relief Cairo Egyptian Museum, CG 17569) As a set, the gods seem to have enjoyed some kind of official canonical status, for the same figures keep re-appearing with the same arms – double axe, spear, bow and arrows, club, whips, swords, daggers – all of which attributes along with their clothing have been carefully sorted out by Rondot.86 Most significant in the troop is the inclusion of a guardian god with a dromedary, which is the characteristic pack animal of the desert caravans of North Africa, Syria, and Arabia. The dromedary guardian re-appears [correction: OMIT:in Berlin 17957 and] in the limestone relief CG 27569. The historical verism of the gods is confirmed by their weapons. Contrary to Seyrig, who had proposed that the double axe had become an archaic weapon of purely symbolic meaning, Rondot has found that Strabo mentions it as part of the weaponry of the Arabs, whom Aelius Gallus encountered in his campaign in Arabia 25-24 BC.87 Thus in our panels the gods are depicted as ready to defend the caravans with real,

locally viable weapons against real adversaries. In another telling verist detail on these panels noticed by Rondot, two of the protectors carry under their right arm a leather water canteen, an essential of desert travel. Unhappily, these military gods defy all Rondot’s efforts to assign them names. In Syria, inscriptions permit the identification of Arsou and Azizos among the caravan protectors, and it is conceivable that they may be counted among the gods on our Egyptian panels. Their iconography, however, as Rondot points out, is too variable to make any reliable connections and inscriptions are lacking. 88 In Christian iconography, barely a century later, St. Menas, whose shrine a few kilometers south of Alexandria marked the start of the African caravan route, makes his appearance as special patron of caravans, depicted with dromedaries that kneel in reverence before him. (Chapter Three, Figure XXXXX) This pagan-to-Christian continuity testifies to the deep need people felt for divine protection on the lonely crossings of the vast deserts. We have already noticed how other panelpaintings of the Fayum sought to invoke divine protection for the perilous sea crossings of the Mediterranean. The Dioscuri, Fortuna, and Isis were repeatedly invoked as protectors of shipping, and on the coinage of Alexandria Isis appears variably guiding the rudder, the sail, or the prow of a ship, or holding an entire ship in her hands.89 These new multi-register panel-paintings were an effort to link the desert divinities with the great Egyptian god of the Nile. The catalogue of the gods was being expanded and internationalized, and this required a new format. In the Cairo 31571a and the Oxford-Cairo 31571b panels the procession was introduced to the presiding god by a pair of figures of intermediate scale on either side, of which only fragments survive, larger than the attendants below but smaller than the enthroned god. One is a priest offering incense, the other a goddess holding a bouquet in one hand and a dog on a leash on the other.9091 The presiding god, in Oxford 1922.238 is enthroned, holding a scepter in his right hand. Estimating his stature when standing, he is about three times the scale of the attendant gods in the first register. This jump in scale was surely meant to surprise the viewer. The god fixes upon the viewer with bulging eyes, while holding a crocodile in his lap, which firmly identifies him as some form of the Nile god Sobek. We encountered him with crocodile on his lap in the first painting found by Rubensohn in a domestic oratory in Tebtynis (Berlin 15978). While Sobek-Soknebtynis in the Rubensohn painting was paired in worship with Amun, here he is enthroned by himself surrounded by his new troop of attendant gods. The painting defines the relationship of this ancient Egyptian god to the new caravan gods, but in the process Sobek himself has been re-defined in a new syncretism with non123

Sobek Presiding over the Armed Gods, Second century AD. Drawing by H. Choimet [Choimet drawing of Cairo Egyptian Museum, no. JE 31571a and of Oxford Ashmolean Museum no; 1922.238 (lost)] Soknebtunis Presiding over Armed Gods, fourth century AD. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum no. 1922.238 with Cairo, Egyptian Museum of Cairo, no. JE 31571a, fourth century AD. Drawing by Henri Choimet [Choimet drawing] Sobek Presiding over the Armed Gods, second century AD, Cairo JE 31571a, detail. Photo N. Muller. [Muller photo.] Sobek Presiding over the Armed Gods, second century, Cairo, Egyptian Museum no. JE 31571b, [47.5 x 17.2 cm.]. Drawing by H. Choimet [Choimet drawing]

connection. On the doors of a naos, such as Berlin 17957, the new gods are lined up in a very traditional, even-paced, Egyptian procession which is now employed to show them reverencing the statuette of the god (very likely a syncretic version of Sobek-Horus) housed in the naos within these very doors. From time immemorial, Egyptian temples were decorated with registers of gods in procession in the cult of the principal god of the temple. In the portable naos, his statuette would have been many times larger than the painted figures, and very likely it was an enthroned figure, like that represented in the Cairo-Oxford painting or in the relief CG 27569. His statuette was then brought out of its sanctuary to receive the traditional cultic gestures we have described. The new gods were initiated into the ancient rites. The unified hierarchic composition, on the other hand, accomplished the same thing with very different means. The sculptural experience of the naos shrine has been compressed within the single enclosing frame of a unified painting. In single plane the distinctions of scale were used to substitute for the third dimension of the naos experience. In the CairoOxford painting the dark brown-black ground in the upper register reads as distance so that, although the figures are larger in scale, they actually appear more remote and therefore monumentalized. The intermediate scale of the figures of the goddess and the priest (preserved in only suggestive fragments) were meant to lead the viewer back by stages to the more distant realm of the great god Sobek-Horus in the sanctum sanctorum of the temple. The second hierarchic painting, Cairo 31571b, must be read in a similar fashion, but the differential of scale within the painting works in an even more radical fashion. The viewer finds the procession of figures on the lowest register more proximate than the Cairo-Oxford procession, for their pace is slower and their gaze invites the viewer to join the parade. But then the viewer is shocked by the discontinuity in the scale when confronting the presiding god in the center: he is roughly ten times the scale of the armed gods in the pro-

Egyptian gods, an “illiterate” syncretism for which Rondot was unable to find any identification in inscriptions or papyri. His dress and crown are also entirely new.92 His chiton or tunic is decorated with a broad band down the center with a crisscross pattern, and it is belted with a cincture of oval pattern. Over this, instead of the himation worn over the left shoulder in Greek fashion, he wears a cape with a clasp in the center that has a dark decorated border around the edges. It is a light material that swirls gracefully around the figure, an effect prized by the artists of the contour style. An under tunic of a darker color has cuffs decorated with bands of changing patterns. The gods of Egypt are distinguished above all by an elaborately coded iconography of crown or headdress, which is largely destroyed in this panel. One can discern, however, his short curly hair framed by a white halo with radiating triangular rays of light. This is the traditional halo of Helios. Moreover, the same divinity, if one may judge by the consistency of his troop of armed gods, seems to be described in the painting Cairo JE 31571b, as well as in the fragment UC 16312, and in the relief CG 27569, and these documents, taken together, enlarge the iconographic base for understanding the new Sobek. The carefully constructed syncretism places in his crown the crocodile proper to Sobek (CG 27569), the falcon of Horus (in JE 31571b, UC 16312, and the relief CG 27569), and Horus’ ram’s horns, referred to as hemhem (in the relief CG 27569). Furthermore, the short, combed-back hair of UC 16312 Rondot reads as Dionysiac or Apollonian. The halo of white with radiating triangular rays is remarkably consistent (JE 3157a, JE 3157b, CG 27569) and it appeared as well on the Rubensohn’s Sobek (Berlin 15978). We will return to this halo shortly. The appearance of a priest with shaven head offering incense at the front of the procession in two instances (Berlin 17957, Cairo relief CG 27569) announces the integration of these new gods into the cultic life of Egypt. The choice of the new template of hierarchic registers is especially significant in this 124

cession. So huge is he, that one can only catch a glimpse of his bust. He looms out of the picture, his head shakes with leaves where the swift falcon nests, and he radiates with the light of dawn, the halo of the Hellenistic Helios – for Horus is the god of the east, worshipped at daybreak. The viability and popularity of this new pictorial template can be gauged by its use in two of the most significant masterpieces of Late Antique art, the mural painting of the Imperial Chamber of the Temple of Luxor (AD 301-02) and the obelisk base of Theodosius I in the hippodrome of Constantinople (390 AD). We have argued that the Karanis contour style of the Oxford-Cairo panel peaked c. 350AD, but the absence of firm dates makes the sequence of works in the multiple register format somewhat speculative. The portability of wood panels and the suitability of painting as the medium of the invention and transmission of such painterly effects as haloes and swirling garments argues for the primacy of painted panels in the development of the multi register template. The progression may not have been unilinear. The mixed media of the headdresses in the paintings of London UC 16312, Cairo 31571b,and in the relief Cairo CG 27569,are closely related but the colorful Hellenistic paintings seem to have priority in invention. On the other hand the relaxed and informal figure drawing of the limestone relief is much more Hellenistic than the static and repetitive figures of the painted panels. Be that as it may, the appearance of the new multi-register template in the panel paintings carries important information on the evolution of Late Antique art. The Grabar model of the evolution, in which Early Christian art is imagined to assume the format of models developed for imperial propaganda, must be revised to accommodate models developed for the pagan religious sphere. In the sphere of imperial propaganda the development of the new format can be followed conveniently from the Imperial Chamber of Luxor to the Obelisque Base in the Hippodrome of Constantinople. At Luxor at the beginning of the century “the motivation,”

Frankfurter maintains, “seems to have lain in the desire to assimilate the emperor’s divine person to the Egyptian highgod,”93 that is Amun, by appropriating the holy of holies of Amun’s temple for a chapel for his legionares. Diocletian complicated the theological problem by dividing imperial authority among four Tetrarchs. The Tetrarchs appear twice in the Luxor mural on a scale about twenty-five percent taller than the mere human figures of the legionares who approach in procession from either side. The monarchs are enthroned two by two in bejeweled furniture above the procession and they appear again standing solemnly in the niche in the center where they flank the much smaller, therefore more distant, bust of Jupiter under the wide-spread wings of Jupiter’s eagle. The Tetrarchs wear golden togas off the shoulder in Jovian fashion, and like the bust of Jupiter all four have yellow haloes. The soldiers walk “at ease” rather than in file, turning this way and that in a relaxed informal way, enjoying the presence of the divinities among them. This iconography belonged to the military realm and the sanctuary was enclosed in the new circumference wall of the Roman castrum at Luxor. At the end of the century the Theodosian relief unfolds in three registers of increasing scale.94 (Chapter Three, Figure 46, The Emperor Theodosius and his Sons Presiding over the GamesSoutheast side of the Obelisque base in the hippodrome of Constantinople). One reads in the bottom register, closest to the spectator, the hippodrome entertainers who dance and play musical instruments. Then, in the second register one finds the citizens of Constantinople, wedged in tightly together to witness the appearance of the emperor. Finally, the emperor Theodosius himself is depicted, in his box, between his sons Honorius and Arcadius and surrounded by members of the court. The emperor is fully three times the scale of the dancers in the first register. He and his sons lack haloes and wear the military chamys. The religious status of the emperors is far less obvious than in the mural of the pagan Tetrarchs. This is the secular realm, a gathering of the citizens to profess their allegiance to the emperor. 125

Sobek Presiding over the Armed Gods. Second century AD, Limestone relief [49 x 56 cm.]. Cairo, Egyptian Museum, no. CG 17569 [Museum photo.] The Emperor Theodosius and his Sons Honorius and Arcadius, Presiding over the Games. Southeast side of obelisque base in hippodrome of Constantinople, 390 AD. [Photo. German Archaeological Institute, Istanbul]

in the divine.

Although one is accustomed to speak of religious Early Christian art as assuming the format of models developed for imperial propaganda, the multi-register format seems to have been well developed in the religious realm of Late Antiquity before its adoption in imperial or Christian art. The new image template is designed to carry the new construction of world order. Classical art had many pictorial means of illustrating the intervention of the gods in human affairs. The illustrations of the Iliad, for example, integrated the Olympians in the same pictorial landscape, showing humans and gods of similar scale engaged in their heroic struggles.95 The new register format of the Late Antique pictorial vocabulary was an intellectual schematic format in which differences of registers and differences of scale could carry a theological or philosophical burden, reinforcing the identities that were encoded in the iconography of dress and headdress. In the painted panels one was expected to realize that the great god of the Nile was at the same time Horus, and Helios the god of dawn, and was related to Apollo and Dionysus, and that he governed and directed the newly arrived armed gods on whom citizens relied from day to day for protection in the vast and dangerous deserts. The divine world was a world of order, maat, and one’s religious observances allowed one to participate in that order. Images mediated this participation

SOME ADDITIONAL TEBTUNIS FRAGMENTS This entire set of thirteen fragments listed here was initially discarded by archaeologist Carlo Anti in 1935, as explained earlier, only to be reexcavated and published by Vincent Rondot in connection with Claudio Galazzi’s resumption of the Tebtunis excavation in 2013. The gods 215. Armed god with double ax (fig. 3.38 [TN 3.49]) 223. Right hand of the child Harpocrates (fig. 3.39 [TN 3.50]) The goddesses 219. Anonymous goddess with floral crown 228. Anonymous goddess wearing gold rings, necklace, and a mantle, with a floral band (fig. 3.40 [TN 3.52]) 220. Demeter/Kore with polos 212. Isis on a throne with the uraeus frieze (see introduction, fig. 0.10 [TN 0.05]) 216. Isis enthroned (see fig. 3.18 [TN 3.22]) 224. Isis with gold lips (fig. 3.41 [TN 3.51]) 227. Isis lactans (see fig. 3.09 [TN 3.11]) 229. Isis lactans (see fig. 3.15 [TN 3.14]) 126

Unidentified textile fragments 214. Cream textile with grey palm-leaf border (fig. 3.42 [TN 3.47]) 218. Beige textile with black palm-leaf border (fig. 3.43 [TN 3.48]) 221. Textile and fragment of feather/scale motif

female. Clues are insufficient to identify the goddess who wears a floral crown in fragment 219, or the goddess wearing a gold ring, necklace, and a mantle with a floral band in fragment 228 (see fig. 3.40 [TN 3.52]). The polos on the head in fragment 220, however, indicates either Demeter or Kore, as Rondot remarks. As for the rest, most exhibit connections with Isis, underscoring her enduring preeminence at the core of the Egyptian pantheon in Roman times. In the most attractive fragment, 212, a uraeus motif (the abstraction of the cobra) forms the colorful frieze across the top of the goddess’s throne, arguing for her identity as Isis. Her sidelong glance presages the look of her successor, the Virgin Mary. Isis has tight little curls across her forehead, a fashion popular in mummy portraits of the second century, which is the dating adopted by Rondot for the entire set of Tebtunis fragments. While the goddesses of Egypt often share common facial types the drawing of the enthroned Isis of fragment 212 seems to be copied in fragment 224 (see fig. 3.41 [TN 3.51]), which may be another Isis. Here the goddess is distinguished by gold leaf applied to her lips. As noted previously, the gold applied to the throat on the Louvre Dioscurus (Paris E10815), is an expression of the donors’ expectation of a favorable response to their petitions. Fragment 216 also has

Although these fragments, still with the archaeological site of Tebtunis, have now lost all of their original provenance information, we have resumed the study of their iconography. It is interesting to note that only two divinities in the set are identified as male. Fragment 215 (see fig. 3.38 [TN 3.49]) shows a haloed caravan guardian dressed for the desert with a double tunic and mantle, and carrying a double-bladed ax, just like the guardian who follows the priestess/goddess in the first register of Armed Gods (Berlin 17957) (see fig. 3.20 [TN 3.25]). In addition, fragment 223 (see fig. 3.39 [TN 3.50]) shows the right hand of Isis’s divine child, Harpocrates. The unidentified textile fragments 214 (see fig. 3.42 [TN 3.47]), 218 (see fig. 3.43 [TN 3.48]), and 221 may belong to either male or female divinities, but they certainly belong to the divine ranks, for the portraits of mortals on the mummies are differently constructed, as Muller has noted. All the other divinities of the Tebtunis fragments are 127

Tebtunis fragment 214. Second century AD. Border of textile with palmettes. 28 x 6.3 x 0.6 cm. Photo. by N. Muller [Muller photo.] Armed God with double axe, Tebtunis fragment 215. Second century AD. 38.4 x 6.7 x 1.1 cm. Photo by N. Muller [Muller photo.] Child’s right hand. Tebtunis fragment 223. 18.1 x 4.8 x 1.1 cm. Photo by N. Muller [Muller photo.] Face with gold lips. Tebtunis fragment 224. 12.8 x 8.6 x 1.2 cm.

Photo by N. Muller [Muller photo.] Left hand with rings. Tebtunis Fragment 228, 40.8 x 5.6 x 0.4-0.7 cm. Photo by N. Muller [Muller photo.]

Isiac overtones. Though seriously damaged, what remains of the face reproduces very closely the lines as well as the measurements of the powerful Isis of the J. Paul Getty Museum (Malibu 74.AP.22). The headdress, too, shows the solar disc and cow’s horns of Isis, and dowels fitted along the left side attest the presence of another plank here, very likely showing her consort, Serapis. The most explicit representation of Isis’s miraculous fertility is, of course, the Isis lactans, which we have discussed in connection with the little fragment 227 (see fig. 3.09 [TN 3.11]), which duplicates the life-size mural of Karanis chamber 50 (see fig. 3.09 [TN 3.11]). Rondot also proposes to identify the gently curving figure on fragment 229 (see fig. 3.15 [TN 3.14]) with Isis lactans. In addition, fragment 223 of Harpocrates’s right hand (see fig. 3.39 [TN 3.50]) may be counted with the iconography of Isis, his mother. The miraculous fertility of Isis remained central to the Egyptian religious experience, witnessed by the popularity of the Isis lactans iconography on lamps and coins through the fourth century as well as by its much-discussed replacement or continuance in representations of the Virgin Mary’s miraculous fertility. The well-known prayer niches of Bawit and Saqqara, which illustrate the Christian theme, are now gloriously complemented by the larger-than-life mural in the vault of the Red Monastery of Anba Bishai. Three more textile fragments defy further identification, 214, 218, and 221.

Sobek Presiding over the Armed Gods, second century AD, detail. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum no.1922.238 [Mathews has Museum photo.] Sobek Presiding over the Armed Gods, detail, second century AD, detail. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum no.1922.238 [Mathews has Museum photo.]

128

129

Enthroned Mother of God with Angels and Donor, sixth century. Alexandria, Kom el-Dikka, House D. Drawing by M. Rodcievicz [from McKenzie ﬁg. 406]

practices in the contemporary pagan cult of images of the gods, and they are well documented in the ancient world and in our Egyptian panels in particular. Garlands and wreaths and crowns woven of flowers were the invariable accompaniments of ancient worship; temples commonly supported a whole industry of gardeners, florists and chaplet weavers, described by Pliny.7 “The gods turn away from those who present themselves without crowns,”8 Sappho had said in the 7th century B.C. and in the 3rd century A.D. Dio Cassius still speaks with feeling about the satisfaction one got from being able to crown the god’s statue with a wreath.9 Ancient worship was never satisfied with adoration in mind and in spirit but required physical gestures. In our panel paintings floral or vegetal crowns appear on the great majority of the figures and have been analysed in detail by Rondot. Garlands appear in the hands of the divinized dead [Ann Arbor 88617; Cairo JE 31569] and the custom of hanging garlands on panel paintings is nicely illustrated in a little terracotta of Sobek, made in express imitation of a wood panel painting with an eight-point frame, on which a garland is strung across the top [FIG Berlin no. 10314]. Offering incense is a similar religious gesture, and the god H r n in our panel paintings is usually shown offering incense at a little altar [Brussels E7409; Etampes; Providence 59.030]. One must assume that what is represented in the painting actually took place before the painting. The person enthroned in Ann Arbor 88617 holds a garland in one hand and offers incense with the other. The small finds of Karanis, as we have mentioned, included frequent altars for incense or for libations. Lamps, of course, are ubiquitous in Roman archaeology, and hence it impossible to discriminate when they are cultic. However hooks associated with images as in Karanis in the Chapel of the Syncretic Pantheon or with the niche of house C119 are evidence of cult, whether with lamps or incense burners. In the sixth century hooks appear before Christian images, as before the enthroned Mary in the chapel in House D in Kom el-Dikka, Alexandria, and before the reliefs of Christ and the Apostles from St. Polyeuktos, Constantinople. In the paintings of the Red Monastery in Sohag (dated ca. 600 AD) both lamps and censers are represented hanging before the icons. But before being an occasion for these cultic gestures, the very setting up of the image was itself the primary religious gesture, according to the rites of votive thank offerings or anath mata that we have described above. Sande proposes to read the painting in the Acts of John in a secular fashion as a “patron’s” portrait; but this is decidedly not how it was interpreted in the dialogue between John and Lycom d s. John mistakes the painting for one of Lycom d s’ old gods and therefore inconsistent with his monotheistic faith. When questioned, Lycom d s answers with a ringing profession of his faith in the one true God who raised him from the

dead; but he proposes that alongside God he wants to call John a “god on earth” whose portrait he “crowns, loves, and reverences.” In other words, Lycom d s explains that his miraculous deliverance by John required a response, and in the ancient world the traditional response to miraculous deliverance was to make an image of the god who delivered, the savior. It is important to note the saint’s reaction to the devotion of his new disciple. In the fifth century Abbot Shenute of Atripe was destroying images of the Egyptian gods; however John does not destroy the painting of himself, nor does he condemn Lycom d s for his behaviour. Quite the contrary, he first validates the icon and then allegorizes it, inviting Lycom d s to progress beyond the icon. First John calls for a mirror, for like a Stoic he was so free of human vanity that he never looked at his own face in a mirror. The mirror confirms the likeness that he sees in the image, and he observes, As the Lord Jesus Christ lives, the portrait is like me; yet not like me, my child, but like my image in the flesh; for if this painter who has copied this face of mine wants to put me in a picture, let him break away from colors such as are given to me now, from boards, from outline and drapery, from shape and form, from age and youth, and from all that is visible. 10 In subsequent icon literature the confirmation of likeness is a common topos: the image is found to be exactly as the saint was known from dreams or apparitions, thus authenticating the icon.11 John next proceeds to what must be taken as the main thrust of the icon story into his narrative, a docetic lesson of the “inner icon.” This lesson builds on a contrast between a 132

have drawn a dead likeness of a dead man.12 John’s docetic lesson should be contrasted with more radical (e.g. Valentinian) Gnostic teachings which attribute all material creation to an evil principle. The author of the Acts of John expresses a real appreciation of physical beauty, admiring the power of painting to render shapes and forms, eyes, hair, and garments, through the richness of blended colors, which, he remarks, are all well polished in the final product. Furthermore while he criticizes the painting of himself he enlarges on the power of a beautiful painting as the type of the perfected soul, of which Jesus himself is the painter in an extraordinary, un-paralleled figure of speech. Commentators have not noticed but the list of thirteen color-virtues are an expanded version of the nine “fruits of the Holy Spirit,” of Gal. 5:22, a list that will be further shuffled in the icon vision of the Life of Pachomius, where again the virtutes are identified as colors, evidently in the halo of Christ (see below p. xxx ). Clearly this language is more than metaphorical; it is an esoteric key to the Christian life as conveyed in painting. Elsewhere in Gnostic lore the colors of the soul are employed in a Hermetic tract on dyes and minerals, in which baptism is the dye that will counteract the dyes of the evil one, and in a later myth Jesus was said to have been a dyer.13 In the sixth century, Agathias talks of power of colors “to ferry over [to its object] the prayer of the mind.”14 Icons were transmitters of prayers. The practice of cultivating an inner icon was very much part of the devotion to painted icons. In the Acts of John the apostle’s final verdict on the cult of icons is surprisingly nuanced, opening up complexities that would be developed for centuries. To rest content with material icons was judged “childish and imperfect;” Lycom d s should have learned to progress to a more spiritual stage. Standing as it does at the very beginning of the whole history of Christian art, the Acts of John presents some extraordinarily serious thinking on the icon, which would hardly be called for if icon use were rare or exceptional among the Christian community to which it is addressed. It is certainly significant that the icon was said to have been made during the lifetime of the saint by the artist’s ocular observation of John and that the Saint personally confirmed its authenticity by looking in a mirror. That the authenticity of an icon of John should have been a subject of discussion is evidence that the Christian community in Asia Minor, which claimed John as their founder, had already in the early second century one or more icons of the saint, the authenticity of which had become problematic. In the history of Christian icons it becomes a standard contention among their devotees that the originals had been made from life and were subsequently copied faithfully, as we will see in Irenaeus’ story of Marcellina’s icon of Christ (see below). It should be noted too that the ideal icon of the legend should be a half-length figure that has “cut off

material image which he calls “the image in the flesh” and an “undefiled” image in the soul, which is to be presented to Jesus. This contrast must be paralleled with the contrast introduced later in the document between the “wooden cross” of Christ’s actual suffering and the “cross of light.” [cc. 97-100]. When darkness came over all the earth at the sixth hour on Good Friday, John saw a “cross of light” which the public witnessing the Crucifixion did not see, and which “united all things.” The spiritual initiate was capable of seeing beyond the physical reality to the spiritual essence of things. Similarly, there is a material and a spiritual icon. The true painter is Jesus, who has made his followers into co-painters with the task of forming their souls in his image; the colors he uses are the virtues which Lycom d s received from John and he in turn from Jesus. John instructs his disciple: But do you be a good painter for me, Lycom d s. You have colors which he gives you through me, that is, Jesus, who paints us Acts of John all for himself, who knows the shapes and forms and figures and dispositions and types of our souls. And these are the colors which I tell you to paint with: faith in God, knowledge, reverence, kindness, fellowship, mildness, goodness, brotherly love, purity, sincerity, tranquillity, fearlessness, cheerfulness, dignity and the whole band of colors which portray your soul and already raise up your members that were cast down and level those that were lifted up, which cure your bruises and heal your wounds and arrange your tangled hair and wash your face and instruct your eyes and cleanse your heart and purge your belly and cut off that which is below it; in brief, when a full blend and mixture of such colors has come together into your soul it will present it to our Lord Jesus Christ indelible, well-polished and firmly shaped. But what you have now done is childish and imperfect; you 133

that which is below,” avoiding all hint of human sexuality, a pre-occupation we will encounter more than once. The first and primary use of the icon is as anath ma, thank offering to the “earthly god” John for having raised Lycom d s and his wife from the dead. Simply placing the icon in an honorable location apart from secular use was its “dedicating,” fulfilling the cultic function of returning thanks to the god. Once dedicated, however, the icon also attracted secondary acts of veneration in the on-going offering of garlands, lights and incense. Further, one must not miss the fact that in three places in the story the possession of the icon is said to bring great pleasure to Lycom d s, which implies that simply having the physical icon was seen as an asset, an instrument of some kind of power. Perhaps the icon was taken as a protection for Lycom d s and Cleopatra from the recurrence of the misfortune that had befallen, for Lycom d s attributed his misfortune to “some evil eye.” One might speculate that the gaze of the saint staring out from his icon carried a benevolent blessing protecting all within his “vision.” Significantly the Acts of John records the curious belief that Christ himself, like a god painted in an icon, never closed his eyes! What more secure protection could Lycom d s have to counteract the evil eye than the permanent gaze of the god who was able even to raise him from the dead. The ancients were sensitive to the gaze of their gods, whom they imagined to be looking out from their images. Pliny the Elder (writing 73-77 AD) noted that Famulus, the painter of Nero’s Golden House, had painted a Minerva/Athena that stared at the viewer from wherever one viewed it. Julian the Apostate (361-363) remarked that, “he who loves the gods delights to gaze on the statues of the gods and on their paintings (eikones), and feels reverence, and shudders with awe of the gods who look at him from the unseen world.”15 To possess such an image must have seemed an uncanny possession of divine power. Finally, the locus of the cult in the Acts of John should also be noted, for it relates to the discovery of our panel paintings in the houses of the Fayum. In Christian communities the conduct of worship in the first centuries was perforce domestic, where it must have admitted of wide variations. Having speparated themselves from Jewish synagogue worship, the faithful, in Paul’s Epistles and the Acts of the Apostles, were conducting their services “from house to house,” relying on those members of the community who could offer accommodation for large groups. When Lycom d s resorted to the ancient practice of votive offering, he could not very well leave his painted offering at one of the traditional pagan holy temples of Ephesus or Smyrna, for this would have been inconsistent with his new monotheistic belief; but evidently neither did the gathering room of his fellow Christians seem appropriate. He wanted his icon to remain a personal possession for his own protection. He therefore followed another traditionally accepted practice and

put it in his bedroom. Pliny, we have already seen, described the cult of paintings of Epicurus in Roman bedrooms in the 70’s of the first century AD; and Septimius Severus (died 211) had a favourite cultic statue of Fortuna in his own bedroom, which during his final illness he sent on alternate days to his sons’ bedrooms. Evidence is never precise enough to say whether the panels found in the homes of Karanis and Tebtynis came from “bedrooms” or other rooms, and the uses of rooms were less specialized in ancient houses. Irenaeus Toward the end of the second century Irenaeus, the first theologian to recognize the New Testament as scripture on a par with the Old Testament, mentions icon cult in two different situations among Christians in his tract Against Heresies, which is a detailed examination of the beliefs and behaviour of Gnostic Christitans.16 Though coming from Smyrna, in the province where the icon of St. John was being venerated, he wrote in Lyons where he had been appointed bishop. To Irenaeus the principal offence of the Gnostics was their claim to a superior wisdom separate from the rest of the Christian community under the established hierarchy. Irenaeus says that the priesthood of the Simonians, who originated with Simon Magus, of Palestinian origin in apostolic times, were experts in dream interpretations, incantations and charms, and they made use of “images.” “They also have an image of Simon fashioned after the likeness of Jupiter, and another of Helena [Simon’s consort] in the shape of Minerva and these they worship.” I ,23,4. p. 348. This text offers precious information on the first instance of what we will call the “interpretatio Christiana,” that is the re-interpretation of classical imagery in which the old gods are re-worked to make them into images of Christ and his saints. We are not told what they had to do to transform the “likeness of Jupiter” into that of Simon Magus-Christ (for the Simonians regarded Simon as the Son of God), or that of Minerva into a St. Helena; the formation of icons of Christ after the likeness of Jupiter is remarked upon in the sixth century (see below). Irenaeus does not specifically describe the cult but implies it was a sort of magic, which of course was and remains a common way of disparaging the religion of others. However, in describing a Gnostic sect of Egyptian origin, the Carpocratians, Irenaeus offers a little more information. He says the followers of one Marcellina of Rome, who led a group of Carpocratian Christians in the time of Pope Anicetus (ca.154-166), “possess images, some of them painted, and others formed from different kinds of material; while they maintain that a likeness of Christ was made by Pilate at that time when Jesus lived among them. They crown these images, and set them up along with the images of the philosophers of the world; that is to say, with Plato, and Aristotle, and the 134

rest. They have also other modes of honouring these images, after the same manner of the Gentiles.” I, 25, 6, p. 351. The “other modes” of image cult may have included prostrations and the offering of incense and lights. The authenticity of the icon of Christ, like that of St John, was thought to be guaranteed by its having been painted from life by an ocular witness. Hence already in the second century the question of the authenticity of icons of Christ and John had already arisen. In the case of Christ the interpretatio Christiana probably involved adapting the traditional iconography of a philosopher to represent Christ, since his icon was placed in the company of other philosophers. Pliny’s icons of the philosopher Epicurus offer a parallel. Hence we have reliable witness of domestic cult of four Christian icons in three instances already in the second century and some idea of their appearances, including a Christ and St. John as philosophers, a Simon Magus/Christ/Son-of-God in the guise of Jupiter and St. Helena as Minerva (see below Fortuna wearing the aegis of Minerva in a panel-painting from Edfu). The formation of the iconography is described not as a process of selection from a list of innocuous subjects but by a syncretism, or interpretatio Christiana, a re-working or a refashioning of powerful and ancient sacred iconography. This evidence would have to be disallowed by a test of orthodoxy, but orthodoxy and historicity are not the same thing. The first test of Christian art is iconographic; Christian subjects are Christian art, whether one approves or not of the practice. One must then add to this series the icon of Christ that is said to have figured in the lararium of Alexander Severus (222-35), along with Abraham, Orpheus, and Apollonius of Tyana. Again it seems to have been a Christ as philosopher placed alongside other philosophers. This is generally omitted but its source in the Historia Augusta 29 and 31 cannot be accused of Christian bias.17.

that the church’s policy on images became a public issue. The turbulent Constantinian period was punctuated with the deployment of some remarkable images. His founding of the new capital of Constantinople gave him ample scope to impress a new ideology on the public; but that ideology was not clearly Christianity. The new capital he dedicated not to Christ but to his own divine self, naming it Constantinoupolis, and placing a statue of himself on a lofty porphyry column in the center of its grand circular forum. The column still stands (called Cemberlita , “Burnt” column). The statue which it carried was a re-used statue of Apollo in a remarkable syncretism, for it showed the features of Constantine but with the rays of the sun-god Helios surrounding his head. It was gilded (and has not survived). At the same time, in a gesture that has been generally overlooked, on the point of the peninsula of Constantinople, at the head of the Via Sacra, he made a votive offering to thank the divine powers for his victory at Chrysopolis on the other side of the Bosphorus, in which he had beaten Licinius and made himself sole lord of the unified Roman Empire, from the Nile to the Thames (20 September 324).19 (Chapter Four, Figure 1 (a) The Column of the Goths Constantinople, AD 330.) The thank offering was not made to Christ (nor to the Virgin Mary!) but to Fortuna. The column (called the Column of the Goths) still stands with its Latin dedicatory inscription: “To Fortuna who led us home victorious, because of the defeat of the Goths,” (Licinius having allied himself with the Goths). This column carried Fortuna’s gilded statue as mistress of the seas, riding on the prow of her ship. These image uses must be contrasted with Constantine’s behavior in the old Rome, where to thank the divine powers for the very same military success, he made a grand offering to Christ, of the huge basilica of Saint Peter, which he erected with the spoils of his victory. His dedicatory inscription on the triumphal arch addressed Christ personally, reading: “Because under your leadership the world in triumph has risen to the stars, to you has Constantine, the victorious, dedicated this hall.”20 The inscription, evidently accompanying a mosaic image of Christ, remained in place in the apse of the church down to its destruction in 1506. In his Life of Constantine (unfinished in 339) Eusebius, conscious of Constantine’s conspicuous votive offerings of pagan divinities could not omit to mention some Christian offerings of his. He attributes to Constantine statuary of the Good Shepherd and of Daniel with the Lions, “made of brass and resplendent with gold leaf,” located on fountains in Constantinople.21 Their specific religious functions are not described, but Eusebius was applauding the place they claimed for the new religion in the public squares of his new capital and the mention of gilding implies religious dedications. The gold added expense and value to one’s offering.

Constantine and Eusebius The quarter-century reign of the emperor Constantine I (312337) inititated in a tidal change in the religious practice of the Roman Empire. Only in the Egyptian papyrological record is there quantifiable evidence of the Christian population. Bagnall calculates the Christian population in 313 AD at just under 20 percent; by his death in 337 it was slightly more than 50 percent, and by the end of the century it was over 80 percent.18 This was a massive shift. Along with his co-emperor Licinius, Constantine in 313 had framed a remarkably evenhanded edict of toleration of all religions; nevertheless, he lost no time in seizing the treasures and estates of the pagan temples to restore the currency, he disbursed vast sums to bishops for church building, and he gave preferential advancement to Christians in the ranks of government so that the upper echelons gradually became predominantly Christian. It is in this period 135

of the divine form of Christ, which is patently impossible, or she seeks, “his image as a servant, that of the flesh which He put on for our sake. But that, too, we have been taught was mingled with the glory of His divinity so that the mortal part was swallowed up by Life.” (2 Cor. 5, 4). Eusebius refers to the dazzling vision of the Transfiguration as his example. “Who would be able to represent by means of dead colors and inanimate delineations the glistening, flashing radiance of such dignity and glory, when even his superhuman disciples could not bear to behold him in this guise and fell on their faces” (referring to Mt 17: 6). Having proven logically that an image of Christ is impossible he tells his correspondent that he has in his possession just the sort of image she wants. Referring to the same icon of his Ecclesiastical History, that a woman had brought him of Christ and Paul “in the guise of philosophers,” he admits, “ I took it away from her and kept it in my house, as I thought it improper that such things ever be exhibited to others, lest we appear, like idol worshippers, to carry God around in an image. I note that Paul instructs all of us not to cling any more to things of the flesh; for, he says we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more” (referring to 2Cor. 5:16). Finally, in the conclusion of his letter Eusebius cites the use of images in processions by the Manichaeans (a Gnostic Christian sect) and admonishes: “that kind of thing is forbidden to us. For confessing our Lord and Savior as God, we prepare ourselves to see God, cleansing our hearts with all eagerness so that purified we may see him. For ‘blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.’ (Mt. 5, 8) Unless, irrationally, instead of the future face-to-face beholding and vision, should we rather prefer the pictures of our Savior, the Word of God?”24 The challenge of visions is Eusebius’ decisive contribution to the discussion of public icon use and it entirely shifts the ground of the image discussion from the classic philosophical problems of mim sis of nature to the discussion of a totally other-wordly experience. Pictures made with pigments on boards cannot possibly convey the vision of Christ which the Apostles saw on Mount Thabor, or the Beatific Vision which the faithful are striving for as final reward for their purity of heart. Significantly, however, Eusebius, like the apostle St John in the Acts of John, refrains from destroying the lessthan-satisfactory images that were at hand; he evidently saw some historic value in images that he believed were made from life. The introduction of visions or apparitions into the discussion is taken up before the end of the century in the story of Pachomius’ vision of an icon, as we shall see.

Eusebius is more explicit and more reserved about his attitudes toward cultic use of images in the great new basilicas being built at this time, both in his Ecclesiastical History, (AD 300 with revisions down to ca. 320), and in a private letter of uncertain date called the Letter to Constantia, two documents which overlap and complement one another. Toward the end of his Ecclesiastical History, when Eusebius turned to events of his day in the city of Caesarea Philippi, of which he was bishop (313-39 AD), he decided he must record something extraordinary that he himself saw. This was a bronze statue erected by the woman whom Christ had cured of a haemorrhage (Mk. 5: 23-34), “which was said to resemble the features of Jesus, [which] was still there in my own time, so that I saw it with my own eyes when I resided in the city.” Eusebius connected it with the tradition of votive offerings and interpreted it as the woman’s thank offering for her cure. This in turn reminded him of certain painted icons, which he himself saw: “The features of His apostles Paul and Peter, and indeed of Christ Himself have been preserved in colored portraits which I have examined.”22 Eusebius readily understood that Christ was being placed in the category of savior gods, and in the catacomb art of the third and fourth centuries Christ is represented repeatedly either as a philosopher teaching, or as a savior in the act of curing the sick and raising the dead. Eusebius’ Letter to Constantia is a very different sort of document though it refers in fact to the same painted icons. When the iconoclasts introduced the letter in evidence at their Council of Hieria (754) they interpreted it as the firm disapproval of Christian images on the part of an eminent Father of the Church. Its address to Constantia cannot be sustained, in so far as the document lacks entirely the gracious flourishes that were de rigueur in correspondence with persons of rank; Constantia was a woman of the highest possible social rank, sister of the emperor and wife of Licinius prior to his defeat. We must attribute it to an iconoclast editing, intended to add weight to the document.23 The writing is accepted as Eusebius, but the style is very odd. Without salutation or farewell, it begins and ends abruptly with direct questions and in between it presents a disjunctive syllogism to prove that the requested icon of Christ is an impossibility, after which Eusebius contradicts himself and admits that he has such an icon in his own possession! Moreover the conclusion of the document (amputated in Cyril Mango’s much cited edition) introduces another surprise. Evidently in his diocese some people were already trying to introduce icons of Christ into churches and as a bishop Eusebius had to take a stand on what should be done with images in public. In his History he might simply record the facts, but as a bishop responding to a question of church practice Eusebius not only resisted but amplified his answer with a theological argument. Either the woman seeks an icon

Pachomius’ Icon Vision Ever since Theodor Klauser blamed the introduction of Christian images on an uneducated laity, the educated clergy, 136

and much more so monks who were dedicated to a life of asceticism, have been credited with an imageless purity in their devotions. It comes as a something of a surprise, then, to discover a story of icon devotion in the Life of Pachomius, chapter 73. Amid growing recognition of Pachomius’ extraordinary organizational genius in framing the first working prospectus for coenobitc monasticism, the story of the saint’s encounter with an icon must also be appraised. Though his asceticism forbade even a drop of oil in his strict vegetarian diet, his Life has been found to document the very earthly aspects of his construction of community, such as its clear organization of separate responsibilities of separate offices in the monastery and its quite realistic economic construction of the coenobitic way of life, which capitalized on marginal farming and manufacture. The monastic way of life was structured around community prayer of the Eucharist and the Divine Office. In contrast with St Anthony’s predilection for solitude in the wilderness of the desert, Pachomius’ foundations were organized close to the farmlands of the Nile. The Life of the saint was composed shortly after his death in 346 but some passages contain evidence of fifth century stages in the evolution of the monastic community. One must therefore examine the icon story for internal evidence of dating, following Frankfurter’s quest of verisimilitude in detail, even in accounts of the miraculous.25 The narrative takes up Eusebius’ argument about making paintings of a vision. The icon story of the Life of Pachomius is first of all composed to reinforce the authority of the great law-giver of monasticism.26 The story has a very formal structure, beginning and ending the narrative with a pair of vignettes of the part played by St Theodore, Pachomius’ chosen successor as superior of his second monastery of Tabennesi, who was witness and participant in his mentor’s visionary experience. As the story unfolds, Theodore was accustomed to come from his new monastery to Father Pachomius’ original foundation of Pbow to listen to the instructions of the abbot so that he might return to Tabennesi the same evening and report to the brothers “the word of God from the mouth of our father Pachomius.” On this particular occasion he is unable to find the abbot in his usual place in the synaxis, that is the monastery chapel whose principal use was the celebration of the synaxis of Divine Office. He then goes up to the roof terrace on top of the chapel where he experiences a terrifying and inexplicable earthquake,“the roof of the chapel rippling like water.” He is unaware that St Pachomius is at that very moment downstairs praying intensely and experiencing a frightful vision in the chapel. Coptic literature is fond of invoking Old Testament typology for its narratives and the Pachomius story shows a conspicuous debt to the account of Moses' revelation on Mount Sinai when “there were thunders and lightnings . . . and the

whole mountain quaked greatly” (Exodus 19: 16-18). Moses alone entered into the vision of Yahweh, while the rest of the Jews saw only the cloud. Similarly Theodore was excluded from Pachomius’ vision and he fled downstairs in terror and began to pray with arms extended, the usual gesture of prayer. However, because of his fright he could not stand upright, and when he sat down he began to feel as if crushed by two walls and he had to flee again, leaving the synaxis. The experience of Pachomius himself is introduced as a distinct unit, and it is given its own title in the manuscript. Remarkably, the revelation is not a spoken record of “the word of God from the mouth of Pachomius,” but a description of a sighting, an apparition, a vision. Vision stories, from Ezekiel to Martin Luther King, Jr., are a vehicle for theologizing and conveying some of the most profound intuitions of the divine. This is the earliest account after the Acts of John of an “icon experience,” and because it is completely neglected in the literature it must be examined in detail. “Here is the revelation that our father Pachomius saw while he was praying: He was looking at the east wall of the sanctuary and the wall became all golden, and on this wall there was a great icon in the manner of a great panel-painting (of someone) with a great crown on his head. This crown was of immeasurable glory and around this crown were images of different colors like precious stones, which are indeed the fruits of the Holy Spirit, namely faith, uprightness, fear, compassion, purity, humility, justice, long-suffering, kindness, sweetness, temperance, joy, hope and perfect charity.” The word used for icon is the Greek word eikon, which is followed by the explanatory phrase “in the manner of a great panel-painting,” a reference to a wooden panel-painting hung upon the wall of gold. The subject of the icon is not immediately named but subsequently it is named twice,“the image of the Lord.”27 We are nowhere given details of the Lord’s appearance. Given the reference to thunder and lightning one is tempted to imagine Christ in the guise of the full-bearded Jupiter, Greek god of thunder and lightning, which was said by Irenaeus to have been cultivated as the image of Christ by the Simonians from the second century. The account offers no details on his pose, whether standing or seated, what he wears, or what gestures he makes, for the most important thing about his appearance is that he has an amazing crown of “immeasurable glory” which is surrounded by “images of different colors like precious stones.” One might suppose the author is describing a crown like that of Septimius Severus, Berlin 31329, which was set with enormous stones of different colors; however, in the surviving images of Christ of Early Christian date, he is never shown with a crown (or other imperial regalia).28 In our panel-paintings of the gods of Egypt the most decisive identifiers of individual gods are their elaborately coded headdresses. The text in fact does 137

Christ with Peter and Paul in an Aureole of Light. Rome, Catacomb of Domitilla, 366-84 AD. Photo by John Dean [Photo from info@johndeanphoto.com ]

not say he wore a crown of colored stones but of “images of different colors like precious stones,” and the colors the author immediately identifies as “the fruits of the Holy Spirit,” alluding to Paul’s list in Gal. 5:22. The fruits are then listed and one of them, Fear, is identified as a ray of green light. One might speculate then that the author is trying to describe an elaborate radiant halo for which he lacks appropriate terminology. The development of haloes of various colors with sparkling rays of light is, as we have seen, one of the most conspicuous new conventions in Late Antique panel-painting in Egypt.29 The author is imagining then that each ray in the halo communicates a virtue to the viewer. The expectation that a panel-painting might be capable of somehow communicating directly the Fruits of the Holy Spirit we encountered already in the second century Acts of John. The author of the Pachomius’ vision is not quoting the Acts for his list of thirteen virtues is much closer to the original nine-virtue list in Gal. 5: 22, (faith, uprighteousness, fear, compassion, purity, humility, justice, long-suffering, kindness, sweetness, temperance, joy, hope, perfect charity), but he has four virtues beyond the Pauline nine, one of which is Fear. In modern parlance fear is more usually taken for a weakness rather than a virtue, but the "fear" in this text is the classic Biblical term for religious awe at the presence of the Divine. It is the experience of Abraham and Moses and Ezekiel, which Sören Kierkegaard, explored in his Fear and Trembling. The godless man, according to Psalms, 13:3 and 35;2, is the one who fears not God; for him God is permanently absent. In the language of the visions in the Old Testament, fear is the perception of the divine presence. The icon story is couched in the language of scriptural visions. As the icon story continues in the Life of Pachomius, two more characters are introduced, namely archangels, and Pachomius enters into conversation with them. The archangels stand somewhere before the icon and regard it reverently. Angels serve a similar purpose in the visions of Daniel and I Enoch as interpreters of the apocalyptic visions, and at the Ascension of Christ a pair of angels, described as “two men in white robes,” appear to explain to the Apostles what they are seeing: “This Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” (Acts 1: 10-12) Two Angels thus became a standard element in Ascension iconography. The fact that in the Life of Pachomius the angels try to explain the event to him, may imply that Pachomius’ icon should be interpreted as an Ascension. In this detail Pachomius’ vision also bears a striking resemblance to the panel-painting Sobek Presiding over the Armed Gods, which introduced two figures of intermediate scale, leading the processions of the armed gods before the great god of the dawn. Pachomius’ story continues: “Before the icon there were two

great and very venerable archangels, immobile in contemplation of the image of the Lord that appeared in the chapel. Our father Pachomius all the while he was gazing upon this grand revelation prayed continually and petitioned in these words: ‘Oh Lord, may your Fear descend upon us forever, that we should never sin against you during the whole of our existence.’ As he continued to repeat this same petition, the angels said to him: ‘You cannot possibly endure the Fear of the Lord that you are requesting.’ ‘Yes, I can,’ he answered, ‘with the help of God.’ Then immediately the ray of Fear, advanced toward him without leaving its place but like the sun rising little by little on the whole earth.” Icon Prayers The introduction of icons in Christian use was followed already in the fourth century by a new genre of Christian texts that can best be called icon prayers, that is texts addressed to the figures in the icon encapsulating the viewer’s or the dedicant’s petition to or veneration of the figures. These may accompany the panel and even be inscribed in its frame or they may be recorded, as here, in the account of the icon’s story. Two of the earliest examples of icon prayers are Constantine’s inscription in St. Peter’s (324), quoted above, and the dedicant’s inscription enframing the mosaic of Christ in an Aureole of Light in the Catacomb of Saint Domitilla (366-84) (below p. XXX). The tradition of such prayers has precedent in some of the dedicatory inscriptions in the Greek Anthology, which are addressed to the divinity represented. Pachomius’ prayer is for a Fear that will preserve him from all sin, and he continues to repeat the same petition over and over, disregarding the severe warning of the angels. Pachomius’ courageous prayer is rewarded with a green ray from the icon. “The sight of this luminous ray was marvelously frightful and very green. When the Fear reached our father, it gripped all his members, his heart, and marrow and his whole body, and immediately he fell to the earth and started to shake like a fish out of water, so much that his spirit was very sad and enfeebled to the point of death. The angels regarded him with a part of their vision without turning their eyes completely from the icon of the Lord that appeared to our father Pachomius. Then the angels said to our father Pachomius, ‘Did we not tell you that you could not bear the full shock of the Lord?’ He called out with these words: ‘Have mercy on me, my Lord Jesus Christ.’ Immediately the ray of Fear withdrew little by little until it returned to its place. Then a flash of Mercy crept up on our father like a rich holy oil. When the Mercy reached him he was strengthened and immediately he stood erect on his feet and began to bless God until the hour when the brothers make the synaxis, and then he rested a little.” That the marvelous ray of purifying Fear should be an intense green color is an extraordinary piece of information. Em138

erald green is the color of the earliest representation of an aureole or mandorla surrounding the Lord in the mosaic of the Catacomb of Domitilla, in which Christ’s attendants are Peter and Paul.(Chapter Four, Figure 2. Christ with Peter and Paul in an Aureole of Green Light, Catacomb of Domitilla, AD 366-84.) All three are seated and all are encompassed by the shimmering globe of intense green light, which the mosaic medium was admirably suited to convey. The virtue of Fear was thought to be represented by the color itself, as if the color contained the virtue. Overwhelmed by the experience, Pachomius fell to the earth trembling. He then formulated a second icon prayer, “Have mercy on me, my Lord Jesus Christ.” This is among the earliest formulations of what is commonly called the “Jesus Prayer,” a text of central importance in the history of monastic piety. The significance of this occurrence of the Jesus Prayer in the context of Pachomius’ vision of an icon has not yet been commented on. In essence the prayer simply borrows the constant refrain of Kyrie, eleison, “Lord, have mercy,” used

in the litanies of the Divine Liturgy, but it directs the prayer specifically to Jesus, the Second Person of the Trinity, the Word made flesh. The prayer uses his name, Jesus, which was assigned to Christ by another angel before his birth (Matthew 1;21). Jesus meant Savior, the Hebrew and Aramaic equivalent of the Greek sot r, which we have seen was a common title for various divinities in the polytheistic pantheon. The repetition of the prayer over and over was an ascetic technique of centering one’s attention, documented in the correspondence of Nicholas of Ancyra (d. c. 430) and bishop Diadochus of Photice in northern Greece later in the fifth century. Diadochus reduced the Jesus Prayer to the simple invocation “Lord Jesus,” instructing the ascetic to “let the intellect continually concentrate on this phrase within its inner shrine with such intensity that it is not turned away to any mental images,” an exercise which Kallistos Ware explains as “imageless prayer.”30 The startling fact is, however, that in the Life of Pachomius the saint is pronouncing his “Jesus Prayer” precisely while addressing an image of the Lord placed against 139

Head of Peter from the Triumphal Arch of Saint Paul’s f.l.m. Rome 440-60 AD. Rome, Museo Grotte Vaticane [Photo from Andaloro, L’Orizzonte tardoantico, plate 34, page 404]

the golden east wall of the synaxis of Pbow. In a challenging article on monastic piety Bolman, starting from a graffito of the Jesus Prayer in a chapel of Saqqara, has tried to interpret the use of the prayer as apophatic, nondiscursive, image-less prayer, which Bolman links to the blank white niches in some of the chapels of Saqqara. Such niches Bolman wants to interpret as purposefully aniconic. But it is also quite possible that the blank niches accommodated portable icons, for in other Saqqara chapels they received mural painted icons, and we remarked in Karanis instances where niches received panel-paintings of Demeter and Kore. Kallistos Ware insists that among the spiritual writers of Eastern Christianity the two ways of prayer, the discursive and the apophatic, are not “mutually exclusive, but each deepens and completes the other.”31 This seems to be understood in the story of Pachomius’ icon vision. The icon in this story, like the majority of early icons, can be considered non-discursive

in the sense that it carries no particular narrative with it (for example, the Gospel story of the Nativity). Without storytelling the icon works to focus the attention of the mind on a single perception of the Divine, as does the monologic prayer, “Lord Jesus.” The reward for Pachomius’ recitation of the Jesus Prayer is then a second ray, namely “a flash of Mercy.” Mercy may be understood as synonymous with the virtues of compassion, kindness and sweetness, listed among the fruits of the Holy Spirit. The Mercy is said to be “like a rich holy oil,” which introduces a Greek word play, identifying oil with mercy (elaion and eleos). Praying to the icon earned Pachomius’ admission to the ranks of the angels in their perpetual adoration of the Lord. The epilogue of the story clarifies St. Theodore’s involvement. The next morning after synaxis, that is the Divine Office, Theodore found Father Pachomius engaged in telling 140

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these events to some of the holy fathers in private, sighing and weeping as he told them: “ ‘To raise my spirit that night when I entered the synaxis I needed only to stretch out my arms before the Lord. And while I was in this agony of soul some courageous one entered with the intention of raising his soul also on account of the fear that he saw.’ Theodore then spoke up, ‘It was I, my holy Father; in reality, having come north toward evening to visit you and receive your blessing, since I did not find you, I went on to the terrace. After a moment, while I was reciting my prayers, the synaxis trembled. I was frightened and I fled and came down. . .’ Our father Pachomius said, ‘The Lord knows, my son Theodore, you have received a great mercy, to know to flee quickly from this place.’” Concluding the story in this way, Pachomius gives a double endorsement of his chosen successor in the presence of a select senior group of “holy fathers.” Theodore, he says, was sharing his agony and his vision of “the Fear that he saw.” Pachomius thus associates his successor with himself in the special vision of the Fear. He then blesses Theodore by sending him on his mission back to his own community of Tebennesi. The icon story of the Life of Pachomius is both an endorsement of the use of icons and an instruction how to pray to them, attributed to the very founder of coenobitic monasticism. One must ask then whether the icon story belongs to the original nucleus of the Life in the late fourth century or to a fifth century recension. Because of the concern with the succession of Theodore after Pachomius it might date even to his life time (died 368). But the iconography of the vision has three important clues that may point to a date in the middle of the fifth century. First, the attendant figures are angels, while in the fourth century Christ’s usual honor guard are Peter and Paul as in the Domitilla mosaic; secondly, the background wall of solid gold fits better with the development of mosaic decoration in Rome in the fifth century, starting with Sta Maria Maggiore (432-40) and the east wall of Saint Paul’s f.l.m. (440-460), in which artists introduce the device of a solid wall of gold to carry the vision of Christ. Thirdly, the evident allusion to Christ’s halo as composed of rays of lights might match the halo of distinct rays in the mosaic of St Paul’s. It is tempting then to link the Pachomius’ vision to the re-building of the synaxis of Pbow. At the beginning of the fifth century Pachomius’ basilical church was found to be too small and was enlarged to 25 and then, in 459 AD, to 32 meters length (25 being the length of the Stoudios basilica in Constantinople, for comparison).32 Like the basilica of St Paul’s in Rome it was a spacious five-aisled church. The “wall of gold” in the Life finds a striking parallel in the fifth century in the triumphal arch of S. Paolo fuori le mura in Rome, expensively decorated by Honorius and the empress

Galla Placidia (440-60). The mosaic was lost beyond retrieval in the fire of 1823, apart from a powerful head of St. Peter and the head of an angel, which demonstrate the super-lifesize scale of the figures. (Chapter Four, Figure 3, Head of St. Peter from the triumphal arch of St. Paul’s f.l.m. Rome, AD 443-61.) Fortunately a watercolor of Pannini (ca. 1630) and the archaeological evidence has allowed Giulia Bordi to give us a rather detailed description of the mosaic, to which we must return.33 The gold wall carried in the center above the arch a mosaic half-figure of Christ, his head beaming with nine white rays flashing out of a halo of gold within a circle of blue. On either side of Christ two grand angels fall down in worship before the Lord as in the vision of Pachomius, while behind them were gathered in two rows the twenty-four Elders of the Apocalypse, who were represented as Prophets on the left side and as Apostles on the right. As far as art history is concerned, there are two surprising implications in the narrative of Pachomius’ icon vision. The first is that already in the late fourth to early fifth century the most profound religious experience was being directly attached to an icon. According to the story, one did not go to icons for instructions in theology in any academic sense, still less for lessons in iconography. One used icons as tools to center the attention of one's soul on the Divine presence. Icons were not catechism lessons but riveting spiritual experiences. Furthermore, the icon experience is described in this document as intensely personal. Pachomius enters into the vision alone. He shares the experience to a certain extent with his chosen successor Theodore and afterwards he recounts it to a restricted number of senior members of his community. But the vision of the icon is not a communal experience. It is an experience that Pachomius has to undergo by himself, and the story puts the icon vision in the same category as Moses’ confrontation with Yahweh on Mount Sinai. Pachomius is the divinely appointed rule-giver for the monks. Icons are not just a certain amount of church furniture. The earliest haloes of Christ are radiant haloes and their distinct rays are meant to be experienced by the viewer as communicating distinct virtues. The association of icons with virtues was made in the very earliest icon story, in the Acts of John. Moreover we can trace it into the sixth century in the mural paintings of Saqqara chapel 709, in which five personifications of virtues surround Christ (again it is the enthroned Lord on the Cherubim of Ezekiel’s vision). The virtues are named faith, hope, patience, perseverance, and wisdom.34 Three of these virtues are on Pachomius’ list. By some extraordinary leap of faith, peering at the bright colors of the painting was believed to infuse the soul with the virtues of the Holy Spirit. This witnesses an approach to the icon experience that is quite beyond our modern expectations. Icons worked somewhere on the other side 142

of Barb. Lat. 4406.36 This was one of the most ambitious creations of Late Antique art. The originality of the overall design needs to be underlined, for like the panel-paintings of Sobek Presiding over the Armed Gods it was designed in a schematic, hierarchic fashion in registers with jarring discrepancies in scale. On the lowest register, closest to the viewer, there stood two giant figures of Peter and Paul either side of the springing of the arch. Andaloro, basing her calculations on the surviving head of Peter, estimated the figures to exceed 3.5 M. Their background was blue (a bit surviving with the Peter fragment), whose deep recessive feeling lent a sculptural reality to the figures of Peter and Paul. Above them the wall dissolved into solid gold. The artist thus distinguished the mantle of blue atmosphere that wraps around planet earth from a hypereal zone of golden fire where the Cherubim circle around the Lord. In this golden zone the artist crowded first of all the Twenty four Elders, placing them in two rows of six figures on each side. These were the Prophets of the Old Testament on the right above Paul and the Apostles of the New Testament on the left above Peter, the Prophets being distinguished by veils on their heads to signify their imperfect vision of the truth. The figures of the Elders were a little more than half the scale of Peter and Paul. Offering jeweled crowns in their hands, they bowed in veneration following the lead of a pair of angels of similar scale who descended with wings outstretched to fall down in adoration before the presiding Christ. The figure of Christ himself, at the top of the sanctuary arch, defined the highest register. The modern restoration made him into an imago clipeata, but originally Christ was represented as a half figure emerging above the arch, on a scale about fifty percent larger than Peter and Paul. Christ’s halo beamed with nine white rays flashing out of a disc of gold within a disc of blue and green. The Cherubim, the four-winged beasts of the vision of Ezekiel 1 (and of the Revelation to John) were distributed across the top of this highest register on either side of Christ. Not only the iconography, but the medium itself of wall mosaic itself was quite novel in the early fifth century. It was Christian art that moved the tessellated medium from the floor to wall and vault surfaces and at the same time expanded its palette by the addition of glass cubes of intense colors and fragile substances like mother-of-pearl, silver, and gold.37 Gold was the most revolutionary of these new colors, its reflective brilliance entirely unbalancing the whole palette. Gold tesserae were made by sandwiching squares of gold leaf between layers of glass. Rome led the development and the landmarks are two key monuments in Christian iconography, the third century Tomb M of the Vatican Cemetery (to which we shall turn in a moment), and this sanctuary wall of St Paul’s. The gold of the wall defined the zone above the clouds where

of the brain from the rational, calculating sphere of our ordinary thought processes--on the affective and intuitive side of the brain. The apprehension of colors was able to convey spiritual power and meaning by itself. The supposition that monks would have had a deep antipathy to images and that they conducted their worship in whitewashed interiors is not justified in the sources. The second important implication of the Pachomius’ icon story concerns its sharing of iconography with the mosaic of St. Paul’s, f.l.m., in Rome in Christ’s radiant halo, his attendant angels, and his placement against a solid gold wall. This implies the diffusion of the imagery in the wood panel-paintings in our corpus as well as their successors, the early Byzantine icons. The vision realized in a painting is best conveyed by a painting and the portability of panel-paintings made them the ideal medium for the transmission of painterly ideas. This subject must be investigated on a variety of scales, whether in individual figure compositions, in significant details within such compositions, or in multi-figure compositions achieved on registers. Pachomius’ vision must be associated with the wide diffusion or circulation of pictorial ideas in the world of Late Antiquity, a circulation that took place both informally in oral and epistolary communications and more formally in tracts and books, as well as physically in the circulation of objects carrying images, but above all in panel-paintings or icons. It is not always possible, nor is it necessary, to specify the channels of communication, or for that matter the direction of the flow of ideas. If we notice parallels to Pachomius’ vision in the mosaics of Rome, this broadens the information base for defining the larger Christian context of the Egyptian document. Christ, God of the Dawn The destruction by fire in 1823 of the five-aisled church of St Paul’s in Rome, begun in 384 as duplicate of Constantine’s St Peter’s on the other side of the Tiber, removed the richest Christian monument of the post-Pachomian period beyond all the efforts of the 19th century restorers to replace it. Indeed the gross ineptitude of the replacement mosaics has discouraged investigation until very recently. The church, AD 384-403, was sponsored by Theodosius I and his co-emperorsons Arcadius and Honorius,35and after an earthquake or lighning damaged the triumphal arch and much of the nave in 442 repairs provided a splendid new east wall of gold mosaic personally sponsored by Theodosius’ daughter Galla Placidia (443-61). Of the original mosaic only two fragments survived the fire, a powerful head of Peter (Mus. Grotte Vaticane) and the head of an angel (lost after its publication at the beginning of the 20th century!). Recently, however, the research of Marina Andaloro and Giulia Bordi has given us a brilliant reconstruction of this mosaic, relying especially on a pair of watercolors of ca. 1632 of Pannini and the anonymous artist 143

Christ-Helios, Rome, Le Necropoli Vaticane, Tomb M of Iulius Tarpeianus, third century AD [Photo from Le Necropoli Vaticane ﬁg. 66, p. 115]

Moses had been allowed to glimpse Yahweh when he had climbed Mount Sinai. Above the thunder and lightning he entered a zone of pure light. In traditional landscape painting the sky zone presents but a single moment in earth’s weather. By transforming the sky into a solid wall of reflective gold the artist introduces an atmosphere which alters with the least movement of light or shadow within the hall or the slightest change in the viewer’s vantage point. Gold is at once the most fugitive color on the wall and the strongest, as it is the color of flame. Against this background was set the grand figure of Christ presiding over the registers of figures below and around him. Like Sobek Presiding over the Armed Gods, Cairo 31571b, Christ was too large to fit in the register and only half his figure was visible, emerging above the arch of the sanctuary. He carried his cross on a staff over his left shoulder. In scale he is even larger than the giants Peter and Paul below, but in his gold atmosphere he belongs in the company of the four Cherubim, who are the culmination of the entire vision. His gold defines a celestial zone in contrast to the blue terrestrial zone of Peter and Paul. This is the zone of eternal truth, guaranteed by its description in Sacred Scripture. This is what Moses saw in the super-terrestrial zone over Sinai and what Ezekiel was allowed to see around 600 BC by the River Chabar by Babylon. The two angels who flank Christ, like the angels of Pachomius’ vision, play the role of the mediators; like the mediators seen in the Oxford-Cairo panel-painting: they introduce the troop who follow them into the presence of the presiding divinity. The radiant halo of Christ is of special importance at this early date in Christian iconography. We have noted its similarity to the radiant halo used for Helios; but the rays of Helios are generally of a triangular shape, that is they are broad rays diminishing to a point.38 On the contrary, at San Paolo the rays are broad beams that widen as they radiate out. Equally important, they emanate from concentric discs of green, blue, and gold, which must be compared with the divine haloes on the Egyptian panel-paintings.39 The panel-paintings of our corpus, have enlarged the base of Late Antique iconography by introducing 26 examples of haloed divinities of considerable variety. The concentric colors of blue, green, and gold of Christ’s halo at St Paul’s belong to the mosaic palette, but the design of emanations of linear rays from a circular disc, often white, is standard for Sobek. Both Christ and Sobek, in his syncretism with Horus, were identified with the Sun. The liturgical hymn saluting Christ as the light of the world (Phos Hilaron) should be cited in parallel to the morning hymn addressed to Horus in the Egyptian liturgy (Chapter Six). The radiant halo makes Christ a god of the sunrise. The ubiquitous cruciform nimbus of Christ in later iconography has obscured the historic moment of the formation 144

of Christ’s halo. The investigation should start with the extraordinary little chamber M, tomb of a child named Iulius Tarpeianus, son of Iulia Palatina and Maximus, in the cemetery that was covered over by the erection of Constantine’s basilica of Saint Peter. (Chapter Four, Figure 4. Christ Helios, Rome, Le Necropoli Vaticane, Tomb M, of AD late third century.) The child’s tomb chamber, barely 2 meters long, is located less than 20 meters from the monument called the tropaion, that marked the spot of the burial of St. Peter himself. The tomb is late third century and therefore roughly contemporary with the Sobek Presiding over Armed Gods. Here we find the earliest surviving vault of gold mosaic, scrolled with a luxurious grape vine, over which a juvenile charioteer drives a quadriga of white horses across the sky, his wavy hair parted in the middle and a cape flying in the wind.40 As Liverani has reasoned, the identification of the figure as a syncretic Christ-Helios is required by the unquestionable Christian character of the program that surrounds him. Against the same vine-scrolled gold ground are a Good Shepherd, a Fisherman, and a Jonah Swallowed by a Fish, the prophetic image of the death and resurrection of Christ. The parents of Tarpeianos belonged to the last generation of Christians immediately preceding the arrival of Constantine in Rome as the first Christian emperor. Christ-Helios was given a halo composed of a disc of gold bordered with white from which emanate seven linear rays. Whether or not the horizontal rays suggest the bar of a cross, the overall design is close to the halo of Sobek-Horus, followed by Christ’s halo in St Paul’s. At the very dawn of Christian iconography the artists, in trying to express the transcendent nature of Christ, turned to pre-existing images of the sun god. The organization of the St Paul’s gold wall in registers reflects the same schematic way of approaching subject matter that governed the panel paintings of Sobek Presiding over Armed Gods. In Saint Paul’s Christ presides over a trans-temporal vision stretching from Moses’ and Ezekiel’s sighting of the Cherubim around the throne of Yahweh to the gathering of Apostles and Prophets at the end of time. In the grand fiveaisled basilica, however, the format was expanded to span 24M across the nave of the church where, from the point of view of the lay participants in the nave the mosaic physically enframed the actions of the liturgy in the sanctuary: namely the enthronement of the bishop and the clergy in the apse, the public readings of Sacred Scripture by the deacon, and the processions by the laity to and from the altar for the Anaphora and Communion.41 Our proposed association of the story of Saint Pachomius’ mystical experience of an icon on the Nile in Upper Egypt with the grand gold mosaic of the empress Galla Placidia in the huge basilica of Saint Paul’s on the Tiber in Rome presumes a diffusion or circulation of ideas and images on an 145

Ascension of Christ on terracotta lamp, 440-470 AD. Private collection [Mathews in correspondence for photo.]

Ascension of Christ, sixth century [45.7 cm.]. Sinai, Monastery of St. Catherine, icon number B10 [Photo: Princeton, Weitzmann Archive]

over his left shoulder, and raises his right hand. His head is circled by a halo, and he is enclosed in a slightly oval ring probably intended to represent radiant light.” The Cherubim swing about Christ’s halo and below him stand two men in long belted tunics, the angelic intermediaries of Acts. This welcome addition to Christian iconography demonstrates the wider circulation even on objects at the bottom of the economic scale of the highly sophisticated design of the San Paolo f.l.m. wall. The schematic rendition of the subject is adapted to the format of the palm-sized, hand-held terracotta by putting Christ and his heavenly company in the inner circle and the “angelic” witnesses below on the stem for the wick. At the other end of the economic scale from the clay lamps, the schematic approach was being employed in panel-paintings as demonstrated by two exceptional sixth century Sinai icons. Panel-paintings in their richness of coloristic detail are the best transmitters of painterly concepts. They are also quite portable, which mosaics are not. (Chapter Four, Figure 6, Ascension of Christ, sixth century AD. Sinai icon B10) On the Ascension Sinai B10 a split down the middle of the icon has destroyed practically the entire figures of Christ and the Virgin as well as three Apostles to the right of the Virgin (the Virgin originally turned left in profile and raised her arms). The four Cherubim are shown as simple angels who swirl about the throne of the Lord, with their wings touching, as expressly mentioned in Ezekiel 1: 9. Rendered with vitality and diversity, their garments curl and twist in the air. So too in the lower register a real excitement animates the Apostles. While some calmly wrap their arms in their mantles, St. Paul, as Weitzmann remarks, “seems to be shrinking under the impact of the vision,” and another Apostle “energetically raises his arm towards the ascending Christ.” Because the subject is rooted in the narrative of Acts 2: 9-11, art history tends to treat it as simple “history painting,” but it is clearly a “vision painting,” showing Christ enthroned in a separate mandorla zone among the Cherubim. The division of the two registers is handled almost “naturalistically” without hard lines or borders. Christ is actually represented about threequarters the scale of the Apostles, but as he is seated at ease in his celestial mandorla amid the airy spirits about him, he is clearly “presiding” over the crowded gathering on the lower register. Mary’s presence too jumps beyond the narrative to her role in the early Church community Acts 2: 14. Weitzmann saw the “impressionistic” figure handling of the entire icon as a direct descendent of the tradition of classical antiquity and he dates it the earliest among the rather numerous icons of his Palestinian group, therefore in the sixth century. Especially interesting in connection with our argument about the circulation of icons, is the fact that the panel, which is 45.7 cm. high, has frame members on the right and left with grooves for a sliding lid to be inserted from the

international scale transcending the deep divides, linguistic, ethnic, and sectarian that cut across Christianity. Such circulation was pervasive beyond all reckoning and beyond the scope of this study to survey. The Life of Pachomius and his monastic Rule were promptly translated from Coptic into Greek, and Saint Jerome, probably during his Roman residence 382-85, St Jerome translated the documents into Latin in which they had an enormous impact; the monastic ideal rapidly took fire in the West and forever changed the structure of Christianity. Images, of course, are best transmitted through images, but they too circulated on all levels. A recent study by John Hermann has assembled five humble North African ceramic lamps (dated by manufacture 440-70), which carry an abbreviated representation of the Ascension repeating salient elements of the St Paul’s mosaic. (Chapter Four, Figure 5. Ascension of Christ on a terracotta lamp, AD 440-70) Christ “carries a staff or standard topped by a cross 146

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hrist the Ancient of Days, sixth century AD, [61 cm.].Sinai, Monastery of St. Catherine, icon number B16 [Photo: Princeton, Weitzmann Archive].

Ezekiel Vision, sixth century AD. Cairo, Coptic Museum, Bawit no. 6 [Photo Zibawi L’Arte Copta, ﬁr 89, page 80 (but larger!)]

top. This provision for the protection of the icon explicitly testifies to its portability; it was designed to circulate. The Presiding Christ This “presiding Christ” is referred to in two interesting documents in Mango’s collection that refer to what must have been very similar double register compositions used in icons of martyrdom, now lost. One is Gregory of Nyssa’s description of an icon in the martyrium of St Theodore at his shrine in Euchaia near Amaseia in the Pontus. Besides details descriptive of the martyr’s tormentors and his death by fire under Maximianus for having set fire to the temple of Cybele, the account tells of the “representation in human form of Christ who presides over the contest.” The icon was necessarily visionary, placing the earthly sufferings of the saint before the eternally enthroned Christ. The Greek expression is Christos ag noth t s, using a title that ordinarily refers to the official presiding over the ag nes, that is athletic competitions. The same expression is used again in a description of another martyrdom, an icon of St Barlaam who also suffered death by burning rather than burn incense to pagan divinities in Antioch in the persecution of Galerius and Maximinus. Historic ag noth t s are in fact represented in consular diptychs, from which we may imagine the zoned composition of the missing icons in the documents. (Chapter Four, Figure 7. Areobindus (Agonothetes) Presiding over the Games, AD 506) Musée Cluny 13135.) In the Areobindus diptych of the Musée Cluny, Paris, dated 506, the field is divided in three registers. In the highest, the presiding official in consular robes, including the trabea picta, holds the mappa flag for the start of the games in his right hand. He is enthroned between two attendant officials on the similar scale. Below are two registers in successively reduced scales: first a semi-circle of well dressed gentlemen attending the games at half the presiding officer’s scale, and then in the lowest register the awarding of the prizes of the contest with figures at about one quarter the scale of the ag noth t s. The same intellectural template could organize pictures of very different content.

eral but his renunciation of the world and his assumption of the monk’s habit. The name Philochristos, meaning both “Lover of Christ” and “Beloved of Christ,” is not a baptismal name in the Orthodox Church, which prefers names with a Scriptural warrant, but is the kind of name one assumed on entry into the religious state to mark one’s choice of a new way of life. It might remind us of Caracalla’s assumption of the name Philosarapis, “Lover of, and Beloved of Sarapis.” In the icon situation, however, one must imagine the novice arriving at Sinai with his icon, measuring a generous 61 cm. in height, in his dromedary luggage. Weitzmann, speculating on the place of origin of the icon, cites Manolis Chatzidakis’ linking of the painting with the Benaki Emmanuel icon of Fayum provenance. Further he compares the Cherubim (only two survive) who surround the mandorla of Christ to those in the Bawit chapel 17. (Chapter Four, Figure 9, Ezekiel’s Vision, Bawit Niche 17 [Cf. Zibawi, Arte Copta, fig. 87]) “The angel’s face in three-quarter view as well as the eagle’s head in straight profile turned to the right are very similar indeed.” Weitzmann thought the style is not as “painterly” as icons B1-B5, which he had attributed to Constantinople, but also not fitting comfortably in the group that he had called Palestinian. The high quality manifest in Christ’s yellow garments overlaid with gold striations, surviving best over his left shoulder and right knee,43 might be interpreted as evidence of an origin in Alexandria, whose classical survivals have come under closer scrutiny in recent years. The unparalleled complexity of Scriptural allusions in the icon, including two inscriptions besides the dedication, also points to an origin

To return to our search for evidence in icons of the circulation of this conceptual approach to images, the Ancient of Days, icon Sinai B16, is a key monument42. (Chapter Four, Figure 8, Christ the Ancient of Days, AD sixth century, Sinai Monastery of St. Catherine, icon B16, 61 cm.) One must start with the icon’s prayer, generally neglected, which is inscribed in its frame, and which introduces the inner motivation of the dedicant: “For the salvation and pardon of the sins of your servant Philochristos . . .” This incomplete inscription is a direct petition to Christ in the second person singular. The fact that the dedicant deposited this icon at the monastery of the Mother of God at Sinai makes it very likely that the donation marked not just Philochristos’ repentance in gen148

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Ezekiel Vision, sixth century AD. Cairo, Coptic Museum, Bawit no. 6 [Photo Zibawi L’Arte Copta, ﬁr 89, page 80 (but larger!)]

in a milieu of intense Scriptural studies such as Alexandria. In contrast to the Roman mosaic compositions of the subject at St Pudenziana and at St Paul’s, which spread out the four Cherubim of Ezekiel’s vision across the highest register to the right and left of Christ, the painter of Sinai B16 has compressed them into the confines of his rectangular frame. As Weitzmann summarizes it, “In every respect the icon is a striking example of a rather simple composition filled with great complexity of content. Combined are three manifestations of Christ, one of them based on Daniel, and the elements of two further prophetic visions (Isaiah and Ezekiel).”44 Weitzmann describes the process in terms of a “conflation” of different “types” of Christ, but one might well refer to it as a “syncretism” of visions of Christ, analogous to the syncretisms we have had to deal with in pagan gods of the Late Antique world. In his visionary icon the painter was struggling to convey three aspects of Christ’s trans-temporal nature: the Ancient of Days, existing from all time; the newborn Emmanuel, eternally youthful; and the Pantocrator, ruler of the present world. Instead of registers, the painter has adopted a concentric solution somewhat similar to the Sinai Ascension. Within the rectangle of his frame he has inscribed an oval cosmic zone full of stars of gold on which he inscribed the title “+Emmanouel.” The inscription, entered

vertically on either side of Christ, begins with a little cross, directing the worshipper to make the sign of the cross while pronouncing the name of Christ “Emmanouel.” This is the symbolic proper name, meaning in Hebrew, “God is with us,” which the vision of Isaiah 7:14 assigned to the Messiah who was to come, and which the angel gave to the very imminent arrival of the Child Jesus in Joseph’s dream, Mt. 1:28. The artist painted an old man with a pale face, white beard and hair, as in Daniel 7:9, but he gave him the pose generally called the Pantocrator, blessing with his right hand and holding a great codex with his left. On the book were entered the words of John 8: 12: “I am the light of the world.” The artist seated this syncretic figure on a rainbow that spans the stellar cosmos, with a sphere for his feet, in accordance with Isaiah 66: 1, where the Lord says, “Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool.” In the four corners surrounding this cosmic design the painter placed the four Cherubim or beasts of Ezekiel’s vision of the syncretic Christ. The clarity of conception is what strikes the viewer in these uses of schematic renderings. Empoying the registeredhieararchic template, the artist could organize groups of figures of rather complex subject matter, secular or sacred, whether axially or concentrically following a hieratic ranking of importance. Art historians, when confronting motifs 150

shared by Christian and secular works usually imagine the Christian works to be derivative from the secular, especially the imperial (pace Grabar), but the dating of the monuments under review should be carefully noted. The Sobek Presiding over the Armed Gods, a decidedly religious work, is our earliest example, dating to the late third or early fourth century, a century ahead of the obelisque base of Theodosius of 390. The Christ presiding over the Apocalyptic registers in St Paul’s dates 440-61. The Areobindus diptych dates 506. By Weitzmann the Sinai Ascension icon is sixth century, and the Sinai icon of the Ancient of Days seventh century. Christian icons were employing concepts that seem to have had wide popularity in non-Christian art as well, sacred as well as secular, in order to organize in compact form very complex aspects of a single mystery. The most ambitious development of the multi-register composition is the monumental expansion which is called the Ezekiel Vision, though its goal is obviously much more than the exegesis of that passage in the first chapter of the prophecy. A concentration of these representations has survived in the monasteries of Bawit and Saqqara, in which they functioned as prayer niches, focusing the attention of the monks during the long hours of their communal prayer, referred to as the synaxis, the Liturgy of the Hours, or the Divine Office. It is this observance of communal prayer that chiefly distinguished the coenobitic, or communal form of monasticism, shaped by Pachomius, from the eremitical, or solitary, form of monasticism, pioneered by Anthony. The development of the Liturgy of the Hours, starting even in pre-Constantinian times, has been very carefully reconstructed in the research of historians of the liturgy, especially by Robert F. Taft45. It was by no means an apophatic mode of prayer, searching for an abstract, image-less, intellectual communication with the Divine Nature. Rather it was packed with images of readings from the Old and New Testaments and above all the Psalms. The entire book of the 150 Psalms was distributed through the week. The sources for this

reconstruction are abundant and they concentrate in the monasteries of the Scetis in the desert between Alexandria and the Fayoum north of the in the Pachomian monasteries of Tabenniosis in Middle Egypt. The paintings belong to a practice of communal prayer that was full of readings, songs, and even exegetical commentary explaining the texts. The monks stood and sat and made prostrations and held out their arms in the form of a cross. At prescribed moments they lit lamps and offered incense. The Bawit Saqqara paintings are strongly reliant on the schematic template that was used to organize material in the panel-paintings of Egypt. Most striking is the parallel between the presidency of Christ over the twelve Apostles beneath him with the presidency of Sobek over the dense row of desert gods on the lower register. Similar distinctions of scale can be observed, with a super life size figure presiding, who can be either full-length or half-length; a similar regimentation can be observed in the massing of figures in the lower register; and a similar placement of figures of intermediate scale beside the presideing divinity--angels or zoomorphic Cherubim. The same basic intellectual scheme was flexible enough to accommodate a wide diversity in details as it was repeatedly re-experienced by new viewers. The subject is not an excerpt from a narrative text whose history can be explained by the history of the text. Nor is it a question of the multiplication of “copies” of an image diffused with “variations” in a more or less mechanical way. Rather it is question of a complex religious experience of an elision of several distinct manifestations or appearances of Christ. Far from “portraits” these icons aim at presenting a vision of a trans-temporal reality. The appearance of the same general scheme in Egypt, Rome, Greece, Constantinople, and Armenia testifies to its enormous importance in the early Byzantine period.46 In the medieval art of Western Europe it became the most popular subject of apse decoration in Romanesque times and then, in Gothic times; the most popular subject for the tympanum over the entrance to the church.

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CHAPTER FIVE THE ICONOGRAPHY OF MARY

a basic re-appraisal of sexuality at the time when the rise of monasticism was re-structuring society. And this represents a major shift in Marian studies, moving attention from the arena of iconographic analysis to the political arena of the ideology of Byzantine rulership. Omission of the earliest evidence of Marian cult, however, seriously impoverishes the narrative of The Mother of God catalogue. To understand the larger phenomenon one must pick up the threads of new research being done on the very start of Marian cult. A recent collection of essays edited by Chris Maunder offers a sampling of this new research investigating Marian cult not only prior to the Councils of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451), but, even more courageously, during the very writing of the canonical Gospels and the Protevangelium of James.4 John McGuckin insists that the responsible use of the term “cult” must describe something more than occasional private attention to Mary. Evidence of “liturgy” is critical, conveying public or community involvement with Mary, and McGuckin starts with evidence which appears already in the 90’s of the first century in the Gospel of Luke.5

The historic loss of many of the most important Byzantine icons, whether on wood or other materials, leaves us relying heavily on literary sources to reconstruct the grand process of the artistic evolution. This is particularly true of two momentous steps in the evolution, the first being the development of a canonical imagery for the Mother of God which seems to have been achieved in 473 under the emperor Leo I in the church dedicated to Mary, in the Blachernai suburb of Constantinople. The second momentous step, a century later, was the design of a set of templon icons to surround the sanctuary of the cathedral of Saint Sophia in 562, under the emperor Justinian (Chapter Six). The challenge is to reconstruct the progress of Early Christian art through these decisive transitions, for their effects were considerable. The construction of Mary’s cult is an essential part of the icon narrative. In Cameron’s story the late start of her devotion followed the acceptance of the term theotokos or “Mother of God” at Ephesus in 431 and the rise of monasticism.1 But by assuming a late start for her cult and icons Cameron puts aside the question of their relationship to pagan antecedents. In Cameron’s outline of the story, the flowering of liturgical and poetic expressions of Marian devotion, which accompanied the expansion of art in the late sixth century, followed on the prominence given to the relic of Mary’s veil at the Blachernai. Constantinople appealed to the Virgin for protection against invaders and the strategic importance of the Blachernai suburb gave the miraculous success of the relic a critical role in the defense of Constantinople against invaders in the sieges of 626, 674, and 717. Ever thereafter Mary’s military role as city protectress became a prominent part of Byzantine piety and this has become the principal theme of Bissera Pencheva, for whom Mary in Byzantium “embodied power rather than maternal tenderness.”2 The Christian interpretation of the Genesis narrative assigned a key role to Mary’s virginity. According to Gregory of Nyssa’s reading of the narrative of Genesis,“it was the virginity of Mary, the Mother of God, that cancelled out death, which had come to mankind through the sin of Adam and Eve.”3 This involved 152

Leo I and the Blachernai Iconography of Mary In 473, the emperor Leo I, finding himself in failing health without a son for an heir, chose his six-year-old grandson and elevated him as Leo II to the rank of Caesar and heir apparent. As Septimius Severus had done when he elevated his sons as Augustus and Caesar, the emperor felt obliged to offer public thanks on this happy occasion in the form of images, known only in literary sources.6 Three dedications were involved, the shrine to house Mary’s most important relic of her veil and two apse mosaics. The relic Leo placed in a golden coffin or casket (soros), which he placed in a chapel or shrine (kib rion). Mary’s Assumption to heaven having left no bodily remains, her Veil of blue, decorated with stars or crosses in some representations, assumed an extraordinary importance as her most sacred and personal memorial.7 For the occasion, Leo had a dedication inscribed 153

Figurines of the Pregnant Mary, fourth or ﬁfth century AD, from Abu Mina excavation. Alexandria, Graeco-Roman Museum, nos. 18968 and 18967 (height: 18.2 cm.) [Museum photo., or copy from Frankfurther, Religion in Roman Egypt, plate 18]

Tammâ of Palmyra Funerary Portrait with Veil, c. 150 AD. [49 cm.] London, British Museum no. 125204, [Museum photo.]

the Baptist and St Konon, who presented to her the two dedicants Galbius and Candidus, “in an attitude of prayer and thanksgiving.” The inclusion of the intermediary St Konon on a par with John the Baptist, the great Prophet who bridged the Old and New Testaments, is most significant. Known as the “Gardener,” St Konon was the most popular saint of the Isaurian military faction, venerated along with St Thecla at the pilgrimage site of Meriamlik.13 His presence in the company of the Mother of God signaled to the public of Constantinople the power transition that was under way and would come to completion when the boy Leo II, dying unfortunately the following year, would pass his crown on to his father Zeno as emperor (reign 474-518). Zeno later assumed a Monophysite stance with his Henotikon edict (482), but what we know of the mosaic betrays no heretical leaning. The second mosaic was the offering (again the verb aneth kan) of Leo I and his wife Verina upon completion of their chapel for the relic, and it illustrated the power transition even more decisively.14 Here the Mother of God was enthroned with the emperor and empress on either side, “the latter holding her own (grand)son, the young emperor Leo, as she falls before our Lady, the Theotokos, and also their daughter Ariadne (mother of Leo II).” It is not clear exactly how the mosaicist managed to depict the gesture of the empress’ proskyn sis as she offered the child. Mango remarks that this is the first recorded instance of Byzantine royalty shown in proskynesis before Christ.15 The double gesture made the child himself into an offering while it legitimized the transition of imperial authority to the emperor’s (grand)son. The mosaic was effectively the proclamation of Leo II’s accession to imperial power. The image stood as an official proclamation, a document put up in a sacred place for all to see, and it incorporated the royal family into the Holy Family itself. The enthroned Mary, with her Divine Child on her lap, was receiving the boy Leo II from the hands of Verina. The equation must have been clear to the viewer: Mary was accepting the heir to the throne of Constantinople alongside her own Son. Like Isis in ancient Egypt, Mary had become the transmitter of imperial authority, and her maphorion was said to include traces of her milk.16 In later years Mary’s role in the transmission of imperial authority generally involved the mediation not of her relic but of her Hod g tria icon during coronation ceremonies. The deposit of the relic at the Blachernai church marks a most important intersection of the cult of relics with the cult of icons and it therefore offers a unique case of what Grabar and Kitzinger had proposed as the major driving force in the spread of icon cult. Besides being a relic, the maphorion was a most important constituent of Mary’s iconography.17 The story of its importation from Galilee should be considered alongside the story of the importation from Jerusalem of an icon of the Virgin and Child which Theodore the Lector

on the lid of the gold casket: “Having offered this honor to the Mother of God (theotok ), they (the imperial couple) secured the permanence of the Empire.”8 Mango notices the poetic structure of the inscription in two dodecasyllabic lines. The inscription indicates their firm belief that a folded piece of used feminine attire could save the whole empire. The record of the inscriptions and the narrative account of the iconography of the mosaics that accompanied the relic seem quite reliable; the inscription and the mosaics were clearly visible in a much frequented public place.9 Mango suggests dating 468 the building of the chapel of the Soros because Verina is said to be “lifting or holding” (bastazousa) her (grand)child to Mary, implying he is still an infant.10 But the date of Leo II’s installation of the golden casket was in fall of 473 when the child was 6 years of age. In the votive offering convention the emperors (man and wife) made the gift of the casket an exchange and an acknowledgement of the divine blessing of an heir to the throne. The mosaicist showed Verina holding up her (grand)child to emphasize the parallel with Mary holding her Divine Child. The gold casket constituted a thank offering (using the traditional verb anatith mi) in return for God’s gift of an heir; its inscription was a prayer to secure God’s continued good favor in the stability of the Empire. Stability was a real issue for Leo who had been a simple soldier and owed his elevation to the purple to the machinations of the Ostrogothic commander in chief of the imperial forces, Aspar. To emphasize his legitimacy Leo had insisted on being crowned in Saint Sophia by the patriarch Anatolios in a religious ceremony, the first Byzantine emperor so crowned (7 Feb 457). Later switching sides from Aspar, in 466 Leo gave his daughter Ariadne in marriage to Zeno, leader of the Isaurian military faction of Asia Minor, and in 471 he had Aspar executed. At the Blachernai Leo sought to consolidate the religious foundation of his rule with offerings to Mary. In this history the key role of the Blachernai images has been lost sight of, even though the maphorion Veil was so important that Mary might almost be called the “Woman of the Veil.” The mosaics that accompanied the installation of the relic assign Mary a key role as transmitter of imperial authority, a role that Isis had enjoyed in ancient Egypt. Two apse mosaics of the enthroned Mother of God are involved, a few years apart; the first and larger mosaic crowned the apse of the basilica.11 Although destroyed by fire in 1434, the essential elements of the mosaic program can be described from the texts.12 Two patricians, Galbius and Candidus, claimed credit for the actual discovery of the Veil in Nazareth, and to show their personal thanks to the Virgin for having committed the relic to their care, they dedicated (the ancient term is used, aneth kan) a mosaic showing the Mother of God with her Son. On either side of her were two intermediaries, St John 154

pulled back, not under a little maphorion, but under a large fold of her himation or mantle, which is pulled over her head to serve as a veil.21 The decision to regularize the iconography of Mary’s attire, we propose, was made on the occasion of the importation of the relic to Constantinople, when it became necessary to standardize her appearance. The iconography confirmed the authenticity of the relic and the relic confirmed the iconography. Mary’s veil and her cloak are often of the same color and it can be difficult to tell them apart. The term maphorion, it should be noticed, is etymologically the diminutive of maphort s, which refers to the long peplos which could be drawn over the head as a veil of both women and men, including priests. Maphorion means a little veil.22 The artists at this stage learned to distinguish four articles of Mary’s attire: (1.) a kerchief or wimple of white linen to hold her hair in place; (2.) an ankle-length tunic or chit n, sometimes visible only in the necking or in the cuffs of her sleeves; (3.) the maphorion or short veil, the edge of which may either be tucked under, or lay on top of her final outer cloak; (4.) an outer mantle or cloak, the himation, made of heavier material than the tunic. This newly standardized veil is elegantly legible in sixth century ivories such as the Berlin diptych23 or the Cleveland ivory24, with the maphorion tucked under the cloak at the neck, and the same seems to be the case in the Sinai Enthroned Mother of God with Angels. All three of these show the enthroned Mother of God with her Child on her lap as standardized in the Blachernai. This is also the iconography that was repeated in the apse of Saint Sophia immediately after Iconoclasm, where she is flanked by Angels Gabriel and Raphael. The layering of Mary’s attire is most legible in the archaeologically meticulous replica of the Hagia Sophia mosaic in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.25 This standardization, we hypothesize, was the legacy of Leo I, struggling to secure his empire by affirming its orthodox connections with the Holy Land. Mary thereby became the Woman with the Veil. In Rome the veil, apart from its use in religious rites, had been the symbol of womanly modesty. In the first centuries AD when Mary’s iconography is being formed one has very good evidence of its popularity in Hellenistic Syria, and this might have been the fashion in Palestine as well. In the Palmyra funeral portraits fashionable women are very frequently shown pulling a delicate veil over their head. (Chapter Five, Figure 7. Tamma of Palmyra, funerary portrait with veil, ca AD 150, BM 125204.) This raises the interesting question of how it was received (or intended) when Mary started appearing with a maphorion veil in the early icons of Constantinople: was this regarded as a Syrian fashion or even a Jewish fashion? It is most interesting that in Egypt the contemporary documentation of

credited Pulcheria with having received (443-53) from her sister-in-law Eudocia in the Holy Land. Both carried critical information on the authoritative iconography of Mary as that was understood in the Holy Land.18 The icon, generally identified as the so-called Hod g tria type, we will examine below. The Maphorion The Veil of the maphorion was a most important signifier not in general use earlier, which now came to mark Mary and distinguish her not only from the goddesses but also from her contemporaries of the first century, whether royal or ordinary women. The two mosaics executed to commemorate the installation of the maphorion in the Blachernai must have shown her conspicuously wearing the treasured relic. In the fourth and fifth century, it should be noted, Mary often appears without a maphorion. In the Egyptian representation of Mary on the silk examiton of Riggisberg (fourth century), the angel Gabriel surprises Mary at the well, as narrated in the Protevangelium, and she wears her hair in a bun with no veil.19 Women at work in antiquity are commonly shown with their hair tied up in braids. On the other hand Mary wears her hair loose in girlish fashion, in a fifth century Coptic relief in Berlin, which shows her nursing her Child.20 We have already pointed (correction: “will point out”) out her loose hair in the pregnant votive terracottas of Abu Minas, if they may be allowed as Marian images. (Chapter Five, Figure 1. Figurines of the Pregnant Mary, fourth or fifth century AD, from Abu Mina excavation; Alexandria, Graeco-Roman Museum, nos. 18967-9, height 18.2 cm.) The evidence of sarcophagi is very early and the Adoration of the Magi turns out to be the largest single block of Marian iconography, counting no less than 72 known examples! In Johannes Deckers’ catalogue entry on a piece in the Mother of God, Mary holds the Child before her on her knees for the veneration of the Magi; her hair is 155

mummy portraits, the elite women of the Fayuum never wear the veil.26 The meaning of this iconographic innovation can only be understood against the larger history of Mary’s cult.

the 80’s, however, describes the conception of Christ as miraculous and virginal, without male participation. Mary was pregnant by the Holy Spirit when she had been betrothed to Joseph but “before they came together” (Mt 1:18-25). This is the earliest biblical evidence of how the first Christians discussed the virginity of Christ’s Mother (obviously long before the rise of monasticism attached special importance to it). Luke’s Gospel in the 90’s gives a more developed narrative, dense with information on Mary’s earliest cult. Instead of concentrating on Christ, the narrative tells two stories of miraculous pregnancy--that of Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist, and that of her cousin Mary. In the narrative, Gabriel’s annunciation to Zechariah and the account of his disbelief and punishment delay Gabriel’s mission to Mary. When visiting Mary, Gabriel explains her miraculous pregnancy: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God” (Lk; 1:35). Before telling of the actual birth of Christ, however, Luke again delays the reader in order to follow Mary’s visit to her pregnant cousin, who happens to be the first to benefit from Mary’s miraculous fertility. Upon Mary’s arrival, Elizabeth pronounces a blessing on Mary’s fertility: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” (Lk 1:42). This blessing, eventually incorporated into the Ave Maria prayer, McGuckin calls the most important evidence of Marian cult in the Gospel. “The history of Marian cult, then, has ancient roots that are more than visible already in the New Testament records. If cult starts anywhere, it begins with a liturgical affirmation, or acclamatio, and we have a beautifully elaborated one staring us in the face in terms of the ‘Benedicta tu’ of Luke 1:42.”31 McGuckin identifies “Blessed are you” as a liturgical prayer formula, which is repeated in Luke 1:45 and 1:48, and in altered form in 11: 27. We have evidence then of a community of devotees pronouncing blessings on Mary for her fecundity, her miraculous motherhood. In the Lucan narrative, at the very moment of Elizabeth’s formulation of this acclamation she gets a kick in the belly from her un-born child who has heard Mary’s voice. Hence the very presence of the expectant Mary, carrying the Lord in her womb, conveyed a blessing on Elizabeth, signaling the health and vigor of the child John in her womb. The cult of the “benedicta tu” acclamations that McGuckin singles out in the in the Gospel of Luke may well have belonged to an an-iconic liturgy, a simple praying or singing in Christian gatherings at the end of the first century, expressing their admiration for and invoking the aid of her miraculous fecundity. In Late Antiquity, however, it would be difficult to imagine an abstract cult of an invisible fertility “goddess.” At this point archaeology comes to our assistance. Among the rich finds at the site of Abu Mina south of Alexandria,

The First Marian Cult The Council of Ephesus (431) is taken by most historians as the starting point of the cult of Mary when the specialized theological term theotokos, or “Mother-of-God” was accepted by the ecclesiastics gathered to define the natures of Christ. The term, however, as Cameron notes, had already been circulating widely a century earlier, employed by Hippolytus (d. ca. 236) and Origen (d. 254).27 Especially important is its documentation in the third century papyrus, John Rylands 470, containing the “Sub tuum presidium” hymn: “Under your mercy we take refuge, Theotokos. Do not overlook our petitions in adversity, but rescue us from danger, uniquely holy one (“only chaste,” in McGuckin’s translation28) and uniquely blessed one.”29 The hymn is a community prayer inserting theotokos, “Mother of God,” into a string of four epithets addressed to Mary in prayer. The liturgical behavior manifest in the hymn seems to have been driven by popular needs rather than directions from above, as witnessed by the rapid adoption of the hymn in Alexandria, Constantinople, Rome, and Milan. The needs behind this popular elevation of Mary were especially women’s needs having to do with procreation—conception, birthing, lactation, and child rearing. These represent a constellation of very intimate and pressing family concerns, in contradistinction from the intellectual needs of the conferees at Church councils, who were searching for formulae to enunciate the mysteries of faith that would preserve the unity of the Church. The initial documentation of Marian devotion is the Gospel of Luke, a documentation McGuckin refers to as “massive and unmoveable.” The Gospel belongs to the last decade of the first century AD, the text is eminently secure, and, as McGuckin remarks, it seems to have nothing to do with Isis. Origen was the theologian most responsible for introducing the term theotokos as a theological formula for the mystery of the entrance of the Divinity into the human race. While the term theotokos was a title of Isis, McGuckin insists “Origen is indebted to the Isis cult on no significant level anywhere in his voluminous writings, and certainly not for his doctrine of Mary as quintessential Pneumataphor [i.e. transmitter of the divine].”30 The pre-conciliar evidence takes us back to evidence in the New Testament itself. The dating of separate books of the New Testament has allowed scholars to distinguish the earliest development in the story of Christ’s parentage. In the 50’s of the first century the earliest epistles of Paul refer to Christ simply as the “offspring” of Abraham (Gal. 3:17) and “descended from David according to the flesh” (Rom. 1:57). Matthew’s Gospel in 156

devoted primarily to the cult of the caravan protector Saint Menas, a series of fertility figurines caught the attention of Frankfurter.32 The find spot in the fifth century martyrial complex guarantees the Christian-ness of the objects, though it does not exactly confirm Frankfurter’s suggested “domestic” interpretation. The simple, repetitive figure is a long-skirted woman, with prominent breasts and swelling belly. She wears her hair long with no veil or mantle, but she is nimbed, and with both hands she gestures to her pregnant condition. These little clay figurines, c. 20 cm high, are dedications, placed in a sacred shrine to accompany prayers for a safe and healthy birthing. Parallels could be cited from pagan fertility shrines, such as the shrine of the Nymphs at Pitsa, in which were also found the votive panel-paintings examined above above ( p. ). If accompanied by the acclamation of Luke I, 42, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” they may be seen as the first step toward an icon of Mary. Returning to the Gospel narrative, Mary’s response to her cousin is one of the most extended poetic compositions in the New Testament, the “Magnificat,” Luke1:46-55, familiar to concert-goers from its numerous settings for the Latin Mass. The chasm that McGuckin wants to see between the cult of Mary and that of Isis can be dramatically demonstrated in the juxtaposition of their respective “aretalogies,” if we may apply that term from pagan liturgies to Mary’s Magnificat. Isis’ famous hymn in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses (or the Golden Ass), is a mid-second century expression of Isiac cult (though it appears in earlier versions as well). The two hymns are virtually contemporary, both are liturgical hymns of the first importance, and both are composed in the first person, letting the divine women speak for themselves. They could not be further apart. Mary’s prayer of thanks for her fertility is profoundly Jewish, couched in Old Testament metaphors drawn from a similar prayer of thanks of Hannah (1 Samuel 2, 1-10). Mary praises God who has “regarded the low estate of his handmaiden;” he has “exalted those of low degree; he has filled the hungry with good things.” Isis’ hymn, on the contrary, is a paeon of praise for her very own divine self: “I am nature, the universal Mother, mistress of all the elements, primordial child of time, sovereign of all things spiritual, queen of the dead, queen also of the single manifestation of all gods and goddesses that are; my nod governs the shining heights of heavens, the wholesome sea breezes.”33 Isis claims to have absorbed or summed up all the great goddesses of the ancient world. One should notice, moreover, that while the language of Mary’s Magnificat is parallel to Hannah’s thanks for the remedy of her infertility, it differs in one extraordinary respect. Hannah’s thanks are offered after the birth and even after the weaning of her son Samuel, whereas Mary’s Magnificat is the thanksgiving of the

expectant Virgin, precisely during her pregnancy. Mary is cast as patroness of expectant mothers. Mary’s original attraction in the Christian community was exactly her appeal to women for the blessings of fertility. Long before the monks of the fourth century manifested their enthousiasm about Mary’s virginity, it was the reality of her physical motherhood that attracted the first devotion to Mary, and of this the theologians of the second century give abundant witness. The grand problem called “Gnosticism” first confronted the Church in a Docetist interpretation of Christ that made his body a shadowy, spiritual apparition. Around AD 110 Ignatius of Antioch had to explain, “Our God, Jesus Christ, was born in the womb of Mary according to the divine economy.” Justin Martyr (d. c. 165) projected Mary backwards into the Genesis account by contrasting the obedience of Mary the virgin with the disobedience of Eve. Irenaeus too (115-c.202) addressed the Docetist reduction of Christ to an ethereal spirit: “Adam had necessarily to be restored in Christ, that mortality be absorbed in immortality and Eve in Mary, that a virgin’s advocate of a virgin should undo and destroy virginal disobedience by virginal obedience.” (Dem. 3.3). Irenaeus then assigns Mary’s virginity a cosmic importance, describing Christ as “the pure one purely opening the pure womb that regenerated the human race into God.” (Haer. 4. 33. 11). Through her obedience Mary made virginity so fertile, that she became mother of the entire redeemed human race. Irenaeus, Maunder insists, was not a solitary “writing in a garret;” his theologizing presupposed a community of the devout who were seeking to understand the largest dimensions of the miraculous fertility of Mary.34 It is in the second century that the Protevangelium of James was composed, most probably in Egypt.35 An extended encomium of Mary, it became, in spite of its eventual exclusion from the canon of Sacred Scripture, the textus receptus for Early Christian art, describing such details as Mary’s childhood in the temple, her occupation of spinning during the Annunciation (as in Louvre CA 654), and the location of the Nativity in a cave (standard in Byzantine art). One must not dismiss it as fairy tale or children’s literature. The virginity of Mary is insisted upon, but the midwife testifies that as soon as the light was dissipated, which had veiled the birthing in the cave, “the infant appeared, and went and took the breast from his mother Mary” (Protoevangelium, 19). The insistence in the document on the visibility of Mary’s pregnant condition followed by the visibility of her motherly lactation must be interpreted as anti-docetic, according to Elliott.36 The Child was a real, hungry baby, not some hallogram of a baby. Mary’s miraculous nursing was a consolation for Christian mothers. McGuckin has followed in detail the impact of the Marian cult on the formulation of the Church’s dogma of the Incarnation at Ephesus and Chalcedon. The Christian doctrine 157

Sel n , second century AD [24.6 x 7.6 cm.]. Berlin, Staatliche Museen Aegyptisches Museum, 14443. Photo. C.J. Mathews [CJ Mathews photo., TF Mathews has]

was couched in Biblical terms as discussed among theologians starting with Irenaeus, and this was fundamental to the deliberations of Ephesus. However, while McGuckin finds the conciliar theology to be strictly biblical, the visible and liturgical expressions of belief lead him to speak of parallels of “cultic” observances, in which he finds “assonance” and “resonance,” “bi-directional dynamics” of “assimilations,” and “appropriations,” between the cults of Isis and Mary.37 As far as iconography is concerned, therefore, McGuckin insists on distinguishing the “substantial” from the “incidental.” “The conclusion is inescapable, to all who have any care for balance in the matter: the Marian cult uses incidental motifs from the iconography of the Isis cult, but the substantial connections are simply not there. The Marian iconography is driven exclusively by biblical symbols, and colored by Byzantine imperial theory.”38 In this formula perhaps McGuckin wants to leave to art historians the task of drawing the line between the “substantial” and the “incidental,” iconographic elements which, as theologian, he puts to one side. The task then is to describe the steps in the construction of Mary’s image which had to express three overlapping and even conflicting aspects of her mystery: (1.) her pure virginity, (2.) her fertile motherhood, and (3.) her divine sanctity. The iconographic signifiers in this construction are basically three, though often used in combinations: the veil of her virginal modesty, the abundant breasts of her fruitful maternity, and the divine throne of the royal House of David. The Formation of Mary’s Icon The study of our Egyptian panel paintings puts us in a new position to understand the initial process of constructing Mary’s iconography for it provides thirteen panel-paintings, plus five informative fragments, of nine great goddesses of antiquity, into whose select company Mary was being inserted (cf. List of Goddesses). However one might like to qualify her membership in this club, Mary’s cult clearly overlapped their ancient functions vis-à-vis the religious life of the people, precisely in the period in which her image was being first constructed. The great goddesses of our corpus provide a context that has not yet been consulted in this critical stage of Christian iconography. In the comprehensive Mother of God catalogue not a one of these ancient goddesses is even mentioned. The goddesses of antiquity served many different areas in the needs of society, some of which Mary gradually usurped or appropriated, while others were accommodated elsewhere or simply suppressed. Whether the relationship with Mary may be positive or negative, the goddesses’ cult defined her cult. Her icons replaced their icons and one wants to examine how this took place. The old language of syncretism, by which one god came to share personal divine properties and attributes of another god and attract the same devout clientele, seems 158

159

Sel n , second century AD. Athens, Athenian Agora Museum, no. S 857[Museum photo.]

applicable to some of these situations of Marian cult but not to others. The question we must pose is what aspects of the goddesses’ cults may have been assumed by Mary and in what way were the first icons of Mary shaped by the pre-existing iconography of the goddesses. One must keep in mind the chronology, for whether one speaks of Mary’s iconography replacing or suppressing that of the ancient goddesses, by the time Mary’s iconography is established in the fifth century the cult of Isis had been abandoned. Bagnall links the survival of the old Egyptian cults to the Demotic Egyptian script, of which barely a few isolated graffiti continue until 452 at Philae.39 Justinian closed the shrine at Philae, as he closed the last temples of Athens. The ancient world knew a number of virgin goddesses. The virgin Sel n , the cold moon goddess of the Hellenistic pantheon, who drives her chariot across the night sky, appears in a little panel-painting in Berlin with a crescent moon behind her shoulders and a smaller one in her headdress.40 (Chapter Five, figure 2; Sel n , second century AD, 24.6x7.6 cm. Berlin 14443.) Her iconography is confirmed in her marble relief icon found in a luxurious villa on the slopes of the Areopagus in Athens.41 (Chapter Five, figure 3,Sel n second century AD, Athens, Atthenian Agora Museum, no. S857) In myth she was the daughter of the Titans, Hyperion and Theia, and she was sometimes identified with Artemis. As the moon governs the periods of women’s fertility, the Virgin goddess Sel n (like Artemis) was a goddess of women and was especially invoked in childbirth; there are also myths of her own fruitfulness, having many children from nocturnal visits to the sleeping Endymion. Like Mary, then, she was virgin and mother. On the Berlin panel,42 as studied by Muller (24.5 x 7 x.5 cm.with upper edge tapered to 3 mm. for frame fitting ), Sel n , with slightly tilted head, gazes to the left and over the viewer. She is painted against a light blue background over a thin white ground. Her halo is a bluish grey with a white border. Along her proper left side she has a scepter or staff that disappears below in the folds of her garments and the tip of one finger of her left hand is visible at shoulder height. Over her right temple a sprig of vegetation is visible, fastened by a broad ribbon in her hair. She wears a dark blue chiton, with highlighting in lighter blue and a three-dot decoration in yellow on her breasts, which is certainly a stellar decoration. This detail is not insignificant. In Mary’s icons her blue Veil, the maphorion, is commonly decorated with one or more yellow or golden ornaments. These ornaments resemble stars or crosses of four or eight symmetrical rays, which placed Mary among the celestial powers who govern women’s fertility. It was Mary’s fertility that motivated her initial cult in the first and second centuries. At the same time Sel n wears jewelry consisting of a thin

gold torque carrying a red stone and an unusual necklace of grey pearls. We noted above how the necklace of Isis in her Karanis mural icon of Karanis 50B imitated contemporary jewelry worn by elite women of the Fayum. Sel n ’s string of grey pearls would have been an extremely rare and precious mortal possession, and we have not found a parallel in the mummy portraits. Women in Antiquity frequently made offerings of their jewelry at sacred sites in thanks for the blessings of their beauty; the temple list of Pap. XXX includes the offering of a woman’s necklace of 52 pearls. Among the nine goddesses of our corpus of panel-paintings it is significant that necklaces are practically universal. There are just two exceptions to this rule but they are “military” exceptions: Fortuna in the Louvre AF10878-9 plays the role of city protectress, wearing a “mural” crown on her head and the aegis of Athena on her breast. Secondly, the Nike of Dura Europus (New Haven 1929.288) has arm bracelets, but no necklace in her very active, triumphant pose bringing victory in battle. Jewelry and warfare do not mix. If properly dressed divine goddesses wore jewelry. Depriving Mary of jewelry is therefore a positive signifier in the construction of her early icons, setting her apart from 160

among the goddesses in our Egyptian corpus), carried helmet, aegis, shield, and threatening spear. In her icons Mary never shared any of these attributes and when, in the seventh century, they began to parade her icon around the walls of the city to ward off the attacks of the barbarians, it was her maternal icon as Hod g tria, with no military connotations at all, that was deemed the most powerful weapon against enemies. Mary is never shown with armor. Constantinople’s first protectress, from the very foundation of the city by Constantine, was Fortuna, the mistress of the seas, goddess of plenty and of commerce, who gleamed in gold atop the Column of the Goths and was restored as late as the emperor Anastasius (491-518).46 One can construct in this fashion a kind of “theology” of the formation of Mary’s icons, which is at times positive and at times negative with respect to the goddesses on our panelpaintings. For negative evidence we should also notice how popular in the Fayum were the great Eleusian goddesses of grain, Dem ter and Kor . The Eleusian pair was found on a panel-painting in a niche in Karanis, Ann Arbor 28807, and probably on Fragment 220 from Tebtunis, according to Rondot. Further, we found this mother-daughter pair both in the mural paintings of the Chapel of the Painted Niches of Theadelphia and in the Chapel of the Syncretic Gods in Karanis. Their responsibility for the teeming agriculture of the Fayum is signaled by bunches and baskets of wheat and flowers, which are always within their reach. Kor , moreover, has a significant role as a fertility goddess, dressed in her flimsy suggestive clothing. Mary has nothing to do with these attributes; she is never invoked as a sex goddess, nor as a patron of farming. Aphrodit of course was expressly the goddess of sexual love and beauty, and this was one of Isis’ most popular syncretic identities.47 In the archaeology of Egypt “votive” statuettes of her abound, showing a slender body quite nude except for a headdress. Images of Isis-Aphrodit are also documented in papyri in dowries, given to new brides as a fertility wish. A similar intention may have prompted the Moscow panel of the Love of Ar s and Aphrodit , Moscow, Pushkin I, 1, 5786, in which the goddess has just started to undress. The nudity of Aphrodit is one of the great accomplishments of Greek art that Christian art purposefully reversed. The nude Eve who appears in Dura Europus and in the catacombs of Rome is a symbol of shame, anxiously covering her sex. We will return to the subject in the story of the competition between the paintings of Mary and Aphrodit in Amaseia (Chapter Six) Mary is never nude, and when nursing, her breast is no more than a flat, token sign of her fertility.

the goddesses of the ancient world. Whatever “divine” powers she might have claimed from the goddesses, Mary did not share their jewelry. In the early icons of Mary there is one famous exception, the Madonna della Clemenza of Sta Maria in Trastevere (FIGURA V, add), in which Mary is very heavily decorated with pearls in her crown, earrings, necklace, cuffs, and throne. This, however, is an anomaly, difficult to explain; it is usually interpreted as an extension of the imperial iconography to remind the Italian population of Byzantine rule at a time when the authority of Constantinople was rather wobbly.43 In Constantinople itself, however, even when language of the Akathistos hymn begins to borrow regal epithets for Mary, her iconography consistently asserts a severe and noticeable poverty, which sets her apart from the ancient goddesses. The severity of Mary also distinguishes her from the wealthy elite women among her contemporaries. This can be measured in two extensive bodies of women’s portraits of the first centuries AD, the Fayum mummy portraits and the limestone grave relief portraits of Palmyra. (FIGURE V, add 4), These funeral portraits are full of true-to-life details of dress and coiffure showing how upper class women wanted to appear for the permanent record. They wear their jewelry with pride for conspicuous display, and careful observation has revealed the women’s attention to shifts in fashion from decade to decade. Diadems and turbans, chains of gold, and necklaces of beads and pearls, pendant earrings and brooches, finger rings and bracelets – it is difficult to find women, or even girls, without jewelry in the Palmyrene portraits.44 To these one could add the documentation of the portraits of the women of Pompeii.45 Mary’s poverty is striking and purposeful, illustrating her aretalogy: “He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away.” (Luke 1:52-53). One final attribute of Sel n should be noticed, and that is her staff, a sign of authority or rulership. The constellations of the night sky were her kingdom. Five goddesses in our corpus have staffs. The Louvre Fortuna, AF 10878-9, has a staff which may either be Athena’s spear, which would be appropriate to her role as city protector, or a thyrsus, which would be appropriate to her ancient fertility role. However, three other goddesses have a staff of judgment, clearly marked off with bands at regular intervals like a cubit-ruler. (Nemesis, Copenhagen 685; Goddess in Mourning London, BM 1975.728, I,; Isis, Malibu 74.A9.22). This is the rod of justice, especially appropriate to Nemesis, as Rondot has pointed out, but Isis shared this responsibility with other goddesses as well. Significantly, Mary does not carry staffs of either military or judicial authority. In this connection we have remarked that the most powerful virgin goddess of antiquity, Athena (not

Mary’s Absent Consort In our defining Mary by her predecessors, Isis was pivotal in 161

V add4. Rome, St. Maria ad Marthyres (Pantheon), Madonna V, add2. Rome, St. Maria Nova, icon

162

V, add. Rome, St. Maria in Trastevere, Madonna della Clemenza

163

The Mother of God Seated on the Imperial Sella Curulis, sixth century AD. Berlin Museum für Spätantike und byzantinische Kunst, no. 565 [Museum photo.]

the re-shaping of the Egyptian pantheon in Late Antiquity when the core of the pantheon was being interpreted as a “family” unit. Isis’ consort Osiris, or Serapis, shared in her cult in religious life of Alexandria with a temple alongside hers. The two are paired, as we have seen on the doors of a naiskos shrine, Malibu 74.1P.21-22, and we concur with Rondot’s suggestion of a similar pairing in the panels of Kellis and Assiut 82. Isis had brought her consort back to life when he was murdered and she had arranged to conceive her son by him. It is significant that Mary and Joseph were never such a pair, and his general absence from Christian iconography is noticeable in the construction of Mary’s virginity. Although the Gospel of Matthew traces Christ’s genealogy through Joseph (Mt 1:16), and Angels give him directions in four dreams (Mt 1: 20-25; 2: 13-15; 2:19-23), there is no evidence of a cult of Joseph in the form of prayers or hymns in the New Testament or in Patristic literature. Joseph belongs neither among Apostles nor among the Prophets, and far more popular was his namesake, Joseph, the son of Jacob and Rachel, whose life is narrated in extenso in Genesis 37-50 and whose story was common in Coptic textiles. To make a pair of Mary and her spouse Joseph in imagery would imply Joseph’s fatherhood and impugn the virginity of Mary, firmly asserted in Matthew and Luke. Mary as “wife” is not an early Christian category of devotion. When representations of the Nativity include Joseph he is always possessed by the perplexity of his discovery of Mary’s pregnancy. On the Byzantine templon barrier Mary is eventually paired not with Joseph but rather with her Son. Isis and Mary as Mothers Other goddesses of our corpus were mothers, but none of them is shown with a child (D m t r’s daughter Kor appears as an adult goddess in her own right). In the epilogue of his study of the diffusion of Isiac cult in the ancient world, Witt offered a brief sketch of the extension of Isis’ cult into Mary’s, reading a Christian teleology into the evolution of her cult that is difficult to accept.48 Nevertheless, the formation of a core unit of iconography of Mary with her Child can hardly be divorced from the older iconography of Isis with Harpocrates. In a penetrating review of the exhaustive monograph on Isis Lactans by Tran Tam Tinh, Larissa Bonfante points out how peculiar the phenomenon is, that in all of Ancient art the representation of a mother nursing her child makes a significant appearance only with Isis and Mary.49 But the issue should be framed more broadly than the nursing mother. In our corpus we have found Isis nursing Harpocrates in panel fragments Tebtunis 227 and 229, as well as in the famous mural of Karanis House B50, which is a copy of Tebtunis 227, but in other media the instances of Isis lactans number in the hundreds.50 On the other hand, in Early Christian art Bolman’s study finds Mary’s nursing quite absent in Byzantium and only eight instances in early Egypt (six mural

paintings from three monastic sites and two relief sculptures from sites unkown).51 This relatively small number raises the question why nursing should be shown at all and its monastic placement in monastic prayer niches poses an “enigma” for Bolman, who assumes that the tender human aspect of the subject would have been un-welcome to strict ascetics.52 For Bolman the problem involves Coptic Orthodoxy as opposed to Byzantine Chalcedonian interpretations, since the subject does not appear at all in early Byzantine art. Since the Gospel guarantees that Mary nursed her Child at her breast (Luke 11:27), one might ask why she is not always shown nursing. Isis may offer an answer to this question, for the representations of “Isis lactans” never in fact show her nursing, though this is generally overlooked. The child Harpocrates never actually takes her nipple in his mouth but instead puts his own index finger in his mouth in his self-identifying gesture of contemplating the mystery. This puts Isis forever in the pose of the “Giver of the Breast,” displaying and pointing to the source of life in her own body. This is what the painting is about, this is what Isis wants to show Harpocrates, and this is what is offered to the viewer of the painting (or sculpture) to contemplate and to try to understand, namely that Isis is the great giver of life. The dogmatic disagreement over the natures of Christ should not enter into the question. Bolman’s very suggestive citations of Clement of Alexandria and Cyril of Alexandria offer various allegorical interpretations of Mary’s milk, but neither the texts nor the images of the nursing can be pressed to yield arguments on either side of the Two-Natures controversy. Chalcedon according to Sebastian Brock, does not seem to have anything to do with images, and any impact it had on iconography was indirect and much later.53 The location of the painting of Mary’s lactation in prayer niches is significant data, for it puts them at the focus of the chief liturgical activity of the monasteries, namely the synaxis, or gathering of the community for the chanting of the Divine Office. But the Divine Office itself does not discriminate Monophysite from Chalcedonian practice, nor is it exclusively a monastic usage. One might question whether the nursing Mary was a particularly monastic theme. Motherhood is not only lactation, but hugging, fondling, coddling, kissing, The Divine Throne How Mary, the maid from Nazareth, got her throne is a question that has not much troubled historians of Early Christian art, conditioned as they are by a long history of Medieval representations of Mary as a queen. However she was not a queen from the start. In her great Magnificat Mary rejoiced that God “has put down the mighty (dynastas) from their thrones and has exalted those of low degree” (Luke 1:52), but this is not a political call for the overthrow of Roman rule. Rather the “mighty” in this context must be read 164

to link Christ’s imagery rather with the sacred iconography of the ancient divinities.54 The panel-paintings of Roman Egypt now expand considerably our documentation of divine thrones introducing new instances of the glorious thrones of the ancient Egyptian pantheon. This has a significant bearing on the Isis-Mary as well as on the Zeus-Christ problem. Rondot, in discussing the thrones of the Egyptian pantheon, has tried to situate them in the larger picture of furniture in the Hellenistic world as described in the classic study of Gisela Richter.55 The world of the gods of course is an imaginary realm. If one went to Karanis in search of archaeological remains of thrones one would be greatly disappointed. By “thronos” the Greeks meant a seat with a high back, with or without arms. In the excavations of Karanis only a single example of such furniture was found and that was a child’s toy.56 The villagers of the Fayum sat on the floor on rugs or cushions, and when they sat on a chair it was a three-legged stool, suited to the irregularities of earthen floors. But the gods were imagined to sit on grand thrones. Rondot has found seven thrones in our corpus of panel-paintings which go beyond Richter’s models by introducing a uraeus frieze (a repeat cobra motif abstracted to a repeated “S”, the cobra being sacred to Isis). This Rondot connects to the design of the façade of Egyptian temples, suggesting that the god on his throne is seated as in his naos. This is a welcome addition to Egyptian iconography in our corpus, best exemplified in the double throne of Sokneptunis and Amon-Re Berlin 15978, and that of the Divinized Adolescent of Cairo JE 31569. However, Rondot has over-stated his case. The uraeus frieze is missing both in the photographs and in the Choimet drawings of three of Rondot’s examples: Alexandria 22978, Berkeley 6.21386, and Oxford 1922.23857, and Rondot’s selection of seven thrones omits examples in fragmentary pieces and all of the examples in mural paintings, leading to the erroneous conclusions that the uraeus throne-back was general and that there were no enthroned goddesses. Fragment Tebtunis 212 shows an Enthroned Goddess (probably Isis) whose woodpaneled throne-back is topped by precisely the uraeus frieze Rondot seeks, while the fragment Tebtynis 216 shows an unknown Enthroned Goddess against a simpler wood-paneled throne-back. While the fragmentary Isis lactans panel of Tebtynis 227 has lost her throne, it is completed by the mural in Karanis B50 which shows a throne-back of textile stretched on a mortise-and-tenon fitted frame which may be decorated with inset gems.58 Isis’ throne is of special interest because her name referred to her throne, her hieroglyph was a throne, and she was invoked as protector of the Pharaoh’s throne. Isis was the “throne goddess.” This textile-back throne was the most common design, it occurs in Horus’ throne in the mural painting of the Chapel of the Syncretic Gods, and it is documented in the drawing of Hamzeh Carr (Rondot, fig. 30,

as the false divinities of pagan polytheism. In the construction of her iconography Mary usurps not the throne of the Emperor (properly a sella curulis, a low seat without back) but of Isis. (FIGURE V, 6) This indeed is the best example of the “resonance” which McGuckin seeks between the two cults. In art history thrones are much more than mere “incidentals.” In an earlier analysis of the imagery of Christ enthroned I tried to correct a common art historians’ mistake of reading Christ’s seat as the emperor’s throne, and I tried 165

The Bishop Euphrasianus and Companions Presented to the Mother of God, 543-53 AD. Parenzo, Basilica Euphrasiana. [Vassilaki, Mother of God, p. 90, ﬁg. 45]

p. 63). Rondot’s misreading of the Berkeley 6.21386 panel is especially unfortunate as it is the most precise representation of the throne’s construction with white silk stretched on a delicate mortise-tenon frame, and on the sides lathe-turned wood with inset pearls and gems and a knob finial on top. Rondot’s naos throne with its uraeus frieze was not as prevalent as he claims and it was a short-lived phenomenon in the history of art, disappearing abruptly with the demise of the Egyptian divinities whose iconography it served. The textile-backed throne, on the other hand, set on turned legs with inset gems and pearls and topped with knobs was taken over very promptly in Christian art at the beginning of the fifth century as the preferred furniture for the enthronement of Christ and Mary. At St Pudenziana in Rome (ca. 410), in a super-life-sized composition, a Christ of Jovian mein claims a throne shockingly like Berkeley 6.21386, with a back of shining white silk on a mortise-tenon frame and legs of turned wood set with pearls and gems and topped with knobs. This textile-back throne then appears in striking series of Christian mosaics: a more baroque version in St Prisca, Santa Maria Capua Vetere, an expanded version for the throne of the Christ Child in Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome (432-40), as well as for the enthronement of the scroll and the Cross over the arch. This is the basis for the wide Christian diffusion of the jeweled throne in Egypt, Constantinople, and Rome, including the pivotal Sinai icon of the Enthroned Mother of God with Angels. The throne which had belonged to the “core” of the Egyptian pantheon became the throne of the core of the Christian pantheon, in an extraordinary pagan-Christian continuity, lasting well through the Renaissance. While Mary had to be poor and austere in dress, the throne of the House of David had to replicate the ancient Egyptian divine throne. The part played by the Blachernai mosaics in this transition must remain somewhat hypothetical. The mosaics were important in the transfer of legitimate imperial authority from Leo I to Leo II and the simultaneous shift of military power from the Germanic to the Isaurian faction, which led to the installation of the emperor Zeno. The throne of the Mother of God is mentioned but not described in the account of the installation of her relic, but one might presume that mosaics of such political significance were of the highest quality and at the forefront of iconographic innovation. In composition, their nearest surviving successor is the Parenzo mosaic (54353) of bishop Euphrasius in which the enthroned Mother of God, flanked by Angels, oversees the transmission of ecclesiastical power from St Maurus, the founding bishop of Parenzo, to bishop Euphrasianus, whose deacon is accompanied by his son, also named Euphrasianus, in readiness to succeed the bishop (other saints in the program escape identification).(Chapter Five, Figure 5. Bishop Euphrasianus and

Companions received by the Mary Enthroned, AD 543-53. Apse mosaic Parenzo, Basilica Euphrasiana.) Mary’s seat is backless and technically not a throne, but it is richly inlaid with pearls and jewels like that of the Sinai icon. Her dress repeats the Blachernai standard, which we must now analyze. In examining parallels with mother goddesses the most often cited parallel is with Isis-and-Harpocrates, which could hardly have gone un-noticed when the iconography of Mary was being formed. Indeed it is not unlikely that the author of Matthew’s Gospel, when he composed the story of Mary’s flight into Egypt from the murderous Herod (Mtt 1: 13-23) was looking over his shoulder at the myth of Isis hiding in the Egyptian delta wilderness from the pursuit of the murderous Seth, as suggested by Witt.59 Like Isis, Mary was the mother (theotokos) and protector of the Divine Child. Isis is the only goddess of Egypt who is assigned such a role and her protection of Harpocrates is taken to signify her protection of the ruling Pharaoh. Mothering in this context should not be restricted to lactation. Throughout the history of Christian art the most frequent Marian icon is the type called the Hod g tria, meaning the “Guiding One.” Its nomenclature refers to the gesture Mary makes with her right hand interpreted as pointing to Christ, whom she cradles in her left, which is taken to be a teaching gesture, guiding the faithful to salvation in Christ. The direction of this gesture is not always clear, however, and it should be observed that in antiquity Mary is never assigned the role of a “teacher” of the faithful, either in Scripture or in Patristic literature. In icons of the enthroned Christ he sometimes carries an open book with the inscription, “I am the way, the truth, and the light,” (John 14:6), but this is never added to Hod g tria icons. (FIGURA V, add 2 / 3) The thoroughly documented study of the Hod g tria by Christine Angelidi and Titos Papamastorakis clarifies the sources. In the first place it is evident that historically the first imposition of the term “Guide” is not to the icon but to the monastery where the icon was kept, located on the shore of the Marmara below the Great Palace in Constantinople, where the monks were conspicuous for their charitable service of guiding the blind.60 The monastery had a fountain of reputedly miraculous properties where the blind might bathe their eyes, of which Demangel reported archaeological remains starting in the fifth century.61 In the sources an icon of Mary was called Hod g tria because of its association with the monastery, but these sources do not appear until the end of the eleventh century. They allege that it was the very icon painted by St Luke and brought to Constantinople by Pulcheria, but they say nothing about the iconography. I have suggested elsewhere the possibility that originally the Hod g tria Mary was not gesturing to her Child but to her own breast, the way Isis gestured to her breast, to identify 166

herself as the fertile source of her child’s nutrition.62 This suggestion has since been endorsed by McGuckin, who argues that Isis as “Giver of the Breast,” is shown “pointing to her breast, indicating the mythos that she is the source of divine life, rescuing first her own child from wasting away, then her devotees, as their S t r. It is quite possible that this was the original subtext of the Marian icons of the Hod g tria. Presented by Christians as Mary ‘Showing the Way’ to the cultic observer, it would have been widely interpreted as an explicit reference to Isis showing her breast as source of divine life. This is a typical instance of the associations between the Mary cultus and the Isiac religion which were entirely understood by Christians from the outset within their own cultural syntax.”63 This kind of “resonance” between the two cults, McGuckin reasons, facilitated the transition of devotees from one cult to the other while not involving a real “symbiosis” between the two, since, McGucking observes, “Isis, in fact disappears when she is absorbed by the Christian Marian iconography.” Mary in mimicking Isis’ fertility gesture was not allowed to mimick her exposure and her breasts are always modestly covered. Even when shown nursing Mary is covered with maphorion and/or mantle on which a diagram of a little breast has been shown. It is not clear exactly when Mary’s fertility gesture came to be re-interpreted as a teach-

ing gesture. The initial direct connection in panel-paintings of Isis lactans with the Hod g tria, offering her breast was clear, we hypothesize, at the time of the regularization of her enthroned iconography at the Blachernai shrine of Leo I. This important step in the development of Christian iconography was very promptly internationalized, appearing in icons and apse mosaics in Alexandria, Sinai, Cyprus, Parenzo, and Rome. The issue of Mary’s relationship to the viewing public as expressed in her gaze was raised by Cormack concerning the Sinai icon. “Why do the Virgin’s eyes look away from the viewer, wherever they stand?”64 The eyes carry important information on the attitude of the Virgin to her viewers, and reciprocally their attitude toward her. Michael Camille and Robert Nelson have pushed the problem of the gaze into the science of optics, inquiring into Byzantine and Medieval discussions of “intromission” and “extramission” of sensory perceptions.65 There is data closer at hand, however, in the images of the gods of Late Antiquity which deserves to be more closely observed. In our corpus of panel-paintings, the gods regard the spectator in various ways, inviting or repelling response. In Berlin 31329, both Septimius Severus and Caracalla, as Roman Emperors assume the divine persona of Serapis, looking over 167

The Widow Turtura presented to the Mother of God by Sts. Felix and Audactus, ca. 530 AD. Rome, Catacomb of Comodilla. [Vassilaki, Mother of God, ﬁg. 196, p. 254; photo: Pontiﬁcia Commissione di Archeolgia Sacra]

expect from their different divinities and what to look for in their visages, and that changed with their needs. They found what they were looking for. This must have been no less true of the Christian clients using their icons, who might at times look for a Mary who dwelt in a world of peace and joy apart from human strife and drudgery to calm their nerves; but on other occasions they might look for a tender and motherly Mary who would listen to their secret worries and who was clearly very involved with her own very human Child, cuddling him warmly and nursing him. On grand occasions she could even be relied upon to bolster the emperor himself, overseeing his son’s orderly succession to the throne. The Mary of the Sinai icon is decidedly a celestial vision. Mary sits enthroned in the company of Angels feeling the power of God the Father whose hand is represented over her head pouring down rays of light and power. In different icons she had a diversity of roles, some of which with attributes she inherited from Isis and the other great goddesses of the Late Antique world. She assumed their look, their gestures, and most significantly their divine throne. (Chapter Five, Figure 4, The Widow Turtura presented to the Mother of God Enthroned, ca. AD 530, the Catacomb of Comodilla.)

the common spectator’s head at some distant vision, while the empress Julia Domna regards us sharply, and perhaps suspiciously, as the two eyes are differently focused. An eyepopping stare has been singled out by Rondot in the angry Lykourgos of Etampes and Brussels (E7409) and the SobekHorus (Oxford 1922.238), which he interprets as a powerful divine gaze, intended, one might imagine, to subdue and control the viewer. Related to this may be the fixed, direct gaze of Heron (Berlin 15979) and Amon (Berlin 15978). We have called attention to the same kind of eyes on the dog (Sothis?) that jumps up beside Harpocrates-Dionysus (Cairo JE 31568). Quite different is the alert gaze of the Dioscuri (Cairo JE 87191 and Paris E10815) which seems to manifest an active interest in the humans committed to their custody. On the other hand the armed gods, ready with sword (Paris BN Y19919) and club (Oxford 1922.237), stand like b soldiers at attention. The goddesses also had different ways of relating to humans. Sel n appears wide-eyed and dreamy, thinking perhaps of her own and her suppliants’ many children. Isis at times appeared alert with a lively interest in her suppliants, as in Kellis, but at other times she is quite superior to the human race, as in Malibu 74.AP.22 and in the fragment Tebtunis 212. To approach the panels this way may seem subjective and variable, but the subjects themselves were variable. The people who used these panel-paintings, knew what they could

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CHAPTER SIX THE CULT OF TEMPLON ICONS IN CONSTANTINOPLE

The addition of icons to the templon barrier before the altar is a momentous step in the history of icons with enormous implications East and West. Among the Slavs, converted to Christianity by Orthodox missionaries in the ninth century, the chancel screen developed into the Russian iconostasis, a high wall of painted panels entirely separating the sanctuary or clergy’s zone from the nave of the laity, while in Western Europe the Byzantine chancel program was mimicked in both paintings and sculptures on the rood screen or the screen encircling the choir1. Placed in close association with the veneration of the Eucharist, these images became themselves the focus of intense veneration. From the point of view of liturgists, the icons are said to be “not essential” to the liturgy, since clearly they are not part of the rite of offering the bread and the wine of the Eucharist and are not mentioned in the earliest liturgical documents.2 Nevertheless, however un-essential they may be called, their veneration is strictly imposed on the faithful in the Second Council of Nicaea (787) as we shall see (Chapter Seven). To explain the connection of icons to the central act of Christian worhip is a task shunned by liturgists as well as by art historians. It is in the sixth century in Constantinople that icons go from being single panels, usually commissioned one by one according to the needs of individual piety, to being a grand galaxy of figures organized in a complex program for worship in the most sacred part of the Christian church. The originality of this creation can be gauged by contrast with similar placement of earlier cultic panels (pagan) in domestic interiors of Roman Egypt and Campania. In Egypt we have considered the comparable placement of cultic images high on the walls in the Chapel of the Syncretic Gods, Karanis, where we found a loose, additive organization of images on either side of a great cult painting of Isis in the center. At the same time in the houses of Pompeii, religious images were often given a place of honor in a domestic context on a high shelf in the salon, but no one has yet discovered the governing logic of their organization. The sixth century development of icon employment in church is a transition from individual uses of icons to their accumula170

tion, in an official public situation that goes beyond any needs of story-telling. Icons come of age: they are now ready to be marshaled, arrayed, and programmed. In this process icons coalesce into a new entity and the whole is greater than the parts, enunciating a solemn, mature statement of Christian theology while shaping and organizing the public worship of the congregation. In the process the altar site is transformed into a kind of stage set enlivened with paintings of sacred figures, with lights and incense, creating a dramatic theatre for the appearances of the holy celebrants through three portals, to lead the performance of the liturgy in processions, readings, prayer, and song. The theatricality of the whole was irresistible, as the envoys of Prince Vladimir of Kiev were to discover on their tour of Saint Sophia in 987.3 The earliest attestation of the term templon for the sanctuary barrier has been fixed by Mango in a collection of miracles of St Artemios dated before 668 in Constantinople.4 (Chapter Six, Figure 1, Templon of St; Artemios, Constantinople; be171

Templon of St. Artemios, Constantinople, before AD 668. Reconstruction by Cyril Mango. [Mango drawing]

fore AD 668. Reconstruction by Cyril Mango.) Taken from the Latin templum, meaning temple, the introduction of the term to describe the epistyle barrier of the sanctuary implies that by the late seventh century the sanctuary had evolved to a point where it constituted a kind of temple within the temple requiring its own name. In Greek naos is the common word for the church building, which is the ancient word for a temple. Calling the sanctuary a templon made it into a temple within the church, a “Holy of holies.” The introduction of the term coincides with the introduction of icons on the barrier and at the church in question three icons were named on the templon: Christ, St John the Baptist (to whom the church was dedicated), and St Artemios (whose curative shrine was located in the crypt). The icons are described in the term labdarin meaning, Mango reasons, a “lambda”-shaped framing like a pediment, a disposition for which Mango has provided a very helpful reconstruction drawing. The silver-reveted chancel screen of Saint Sophia, 562, is the pivotal monument in this development of icon cult. Lasting for six and a half centuries until pillaged by the Crusaders in 1204,5 it has hardly been studied beyond the grand architecture of its emplacement.6 Working from traces in the pavement and the revetments of Saint Sophia as well as from the references in literary sources, Stephen Xydis, Roland Mainstone, and M.L.Fobelli have given us a reliable reconstruction of the epistyle of the sanctuary that projected into the nave of the church before the apse, with a huge ambo or pulpit that stood in front of it.7 The architectural historians are in substantial agreement on the arrangement. But considerably more information is available about the icons themselves, their theological program, and their cultic functions. In archaeological evidence our data was more than doubled with the addition of the finds of St Polyeuktos at Saraçhane, barely twenty minutes walk up the M s (or Center Street) from Saint Sophia, where in 1960-70 archaeologists Martin Harrison and Nezih Fıratlı uncovered the substantial remains of another set of templon icons dating 520-27, earlier even than the installation of Justinian’s first sanctuary in the Cathedral, 537.8 The surviving ten panels, unaccountably neglected in Byzantine studies for over half a century, have many points in common with the Cathedral program and supply considerable complimentary information about the iconography and the cultic use of the icons. In addition the site yielded a set of fourteen grand marble niches encircling the sanctuary, sculpted with peacocks with their tails displayed, which Harrison proposed to identify as the Cherubim described by Ezekiel. This identification supported by McKenzie with abundant additional evidence. The Peacock-Cherubim are a most important Old Testament link developed by Vrt an s Kertoł (604-607) in his defense of Christian icons. The archaeological data from St. Polyeuktos must be studied

side by side with evidence from Saint Sophia for the installation of its second sanctuary, 562. On the occasion of its dedication Justinian’s poet laureate Paul the Silentiary was commissioned to celebrate in verse the new silver sanctuary, and along with his descriptions of the icons he has given a lively extended account of their cultic use, which can be independently confirmed from liturgical sources. In addition we have abundant information on the churchman who was responsible for formulating the program of the Saint Sophia chancel, namely Saint Eutychios who served as patriarch 552-65 and again, after an interval of exile, 577-82.9 This information has also been largely unexplored, but it was he who presided over the ecumenical Council of Constantinople II, convened in 553 to deal with the greatest theological issue of the century, namely the split of the Church consequent upon the definition of Two Natures in Christ in the Council of Chalcedon 451. Eutychios is a major figure in the theological definition of orthodoxy and he is a major figure in the establishment of the cult of icons. The role of his Cathedral image program in the ecclesiastical contest with the Monophysites has never been recognized. Taken together then, Saint Polyeuktos and Saint Sophia offer abundant evidence of the first efforts to create a systematic icon program and to define the cultic uses of the imposing icons on the templon. In addition, the investigation at St. Polyeuktos yields considerable information on the explosive eighth century iconoclastic reaction against such practices. The complete omission of all of this decisive evidence in the art historical literature is hard to explain. The templon icons of Saint Sophia are certainly the most un-studied major monument in the entire history of Byzantine art. Upon the death of the patriarch Menas in 552, Justinian believed that he had found in the abbot Eutychios from Amaseia in the Pontus an ardent ally in his campaign to reconcile the Monophysite segment of the church, meaning principally Egypt and Syria, with the Orthodoxy of Constantinople. Under Eutychios’ direction the ecumenical Council of Constantinople II was convened the following year. But the Council, instead of re-considering the divisive and very difficult issue of the Natures of Christ, settled upon re-asserting the definition of Chalcedon to which they now added the condemnation of certain Nestorian theologians who had been accepted at Chalcedon but were criticized by the Monophysites. This addition was contained in a document called the “Three Chapters.” This was far from a compromise, and the condemnation of the three theologians (Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Ibas of Edessa) was accepted by, but failed to satisfy, the Monophysites. Then on the 7th of May 558, at five o’clock in the afternoon, the enormous hundred-foot dome of Saint Sophia, already under repair for earthquake damage, came crashing to the ground, rudely interrupting 172

appropriation of the architecture of Alexandria.15 But the battered marble reliefs from the templon did not enter into McKenzie’s argument. Inexplicably, they have been omitted entirely for over half a century from studies of early Byzantine art, as well as from the intense debates on Iconoclasm.16 This is the only representative set of templon icons surviving from the pre-iconoclast era and even those who contested their sixth century date never proposed a post-iconoclast date. Especially valuable is the geographically fixed provenance, for there is no other set of early Byzantine icons with such fixed provenance. The icons of the Sinai collection, though presently part of a single collection, were offered one by one to the monastery, and they include no extended sets of icons before the Middle Byzantine period. We must first examine the archaeological context of the finds before discussing the program and the use of the icons. The figures on the panels are Christ displaying his Gospel while teaching, the Child Jesus in Mary’s lap, and eight of the Apostles, five or six of whom carry books. They are nonnarrative images. The figures all appear in strict frontal or “iconic” gaze, looking at the worshipper. They are indeed the best formulation of the type of the single half-length figure, which was to become the standard icon type for the long history of Byzantine art. Harrison found the panels in two piles at either end of the basement corridor under the narthex, where someone had reverently gathered them up after their rude mutilation. Finished smooth on the reverse, the relief panels could easily have found convenient re-use as paving slabs; but that desecration did not take place. Harrison’s description of the find spot is extremely helpful. “The first six panels were found deep in the Byzantine destruction-layer U/16, and their defacement is thus most easily attributed to the outbreak of Iconoclasm, which thus becomes a terminus ante quem for the reliefs. There seems to be no reason not to assign them to the sixth century. After their defacement they were presumably salvaged and put into storage, so that their find-spot in the [sub-]narthex may bear little relation to their original location.”17 Evidently even in their ruined state someone still attached some sanctity to them and wanted to save them. Carved in high relief in white Proconnesian marble, the plaques measure 36-38 cm in height, 34-43 cm in width, with an average thickness of 6 cm. Because the style of the panels is somewhat different from the style of the nonfigurative, decorative sculpture of the church, Mango and Belting disagreed with Harrison’s dating of the panels to the foundation of Juliana Anicia’s church, but they introduced no specific archaeological arguments for a later dating. On the contrary, Harrison’s archaeological dating finds confirmation in the style, in the iconography, and in the program of the panels. Putting aside for the moment the Peacock niches, the figures of the relief icons fit nicely as

all theological discussions. When at length a carefully redesigned replacement was completed (by Christmas of 562), the church sheltered a bold new formulation of Orthodoxy in the installation of a grand icon-clad chancel surrounding the sanctuary. The theological content of the chancel icons has never been investigated. The tendency of Byzantine scholarship to segregate disciplines in academic pigeonholes has not encouraged connecting theology, iconography, and liturgy even when the same powerful churchman, Saint Eutychios, presided over all three. Some connections can be made, putting together the sophisticated imagery of the two chancel barriers, and associating their complex program with the strong antimonophysite stance of the Church of Constantinople in the mid-sixth century. One must examine as well the implication of this icon development for the devotional practices of the Orthodox Church, for the templon icons were more than a harmless narrative catechism; they entered decisively and permanently into the worship of the Church. Derek Krueger has recently characterized the manner in which the liturgy of the mid and late sixth century retold the biblical narratives in a dramatic role-playing fashion.10 The theatricality of the experience is what impressed the envoys of Prince Vladimir of Kiev in 987. Assisting at the Divine Liturgy before the chancel screen of Saint Sophia, they reported, “We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We know only that God dwells there among men.”11 The experience was overwhelming. The Archaeology of Saint Polyeuktos The Harrison-Firatli excavation of 1964-69 found the remains of an enormous church, along the north side of the M s , or Center Street, of Constantinople, in the section called Saraçhane in Istanbul, which anticipated Justinian’s Saint Eir n in size and in structural system. 12 The fortuitous preservation of considerable portions of the handsome dedicatory inscription, which had been recorded in the Greek Anthology, identified the building beyond question as the ambitious foundation of Anicia Juliana, 520-27.13 The church was dedicated to Saint Polyeuktos, an obscure thirdcentury martyr. His Greek name means the “much invoked one;” he was popularly invoked in cases of litigation, and he was evidently a spiritual patron of the Anicius family whose palace lay just to the north of the church. This distinguished senatorial family had branches in Constantinople and Rome, and her father, Flavius Anicius Olybrius, was briefly the emperor of the western half of the empire in 472. Stories of Juliana’s competition with the emperor Justinian in wealth and ostentation were familiar to Gregory of Tours.14 Judith McKenzie has convincingly connected the showy, niched architectural order of her church with a wholesale Byzantine 173

The Sermon on the Mount, Sarcophagus of the Silivri Kapi Tomb, c.475 AD. Istanbul, Arkeologi Müzeleri [Photo Mehmet Tunay, Mathews has photo.]

Peacocks from nave of Saint Polyeuktos, 520-27 AD. [Reconstruction drawing by Jonathan Bardill] Peacock from nave of Saint Polyeuktos, 520-27 AD. Istanbul, Arkeoloji Müzeleri [Museum Photo. or Harrison, ]

sequel to the evolution of fifth century Constantinopolitan sarcophagus sculpture. The comparable pieces are often less careful workmanship since they were made for a more modest patronage, carved in inexpensive limestone rather than in marble.18(Chapter Six, Figure 3, The Sermon on the Mount, Sarcophagus of the Silivri Kapi tomb, ca. 475, Istanbul Arkeoloji Müzeleri) One notes in the funerary sculpture a gradual loss of skeletal structure in the round-shouldered bodies, a tendency toward a schematic rendering of garments in neat parallel lines, and a particular interest in large ears and staring eyes. The ears are often exaggerated in size with a drilled hole, and the eyes bulge or are drilled to emphasize the focus of their gaze. On the St. Polyeuktos panels the ears are all of exaggerated proportions and are drilled. Possibly the sculptors called upon for the icon carving were a different team from those doing decorative work on the niches and capitals. But the choice of marble, rather than painted wooden panels, for the icons represents a preference for a finer and more expensive medium than the wood. A few decades later

Justinian, to outdo Anicia Juliana and everyone else in the lavishness of his building program, would commission icons of silver relief for his Cathedral. In his analysis of the Polyeuktos panels Harrison distinguished four different sculptors at work, but more broadly considered they separate into two very distinct styles, and they define a turning moment in the history of sculpture in Constantinople. The first style is the more traditional or oldfashioned style, which Harrison calls “impressionistic,” and a good anchor for this style is found in a set of four hearty Evangelists (only one intact with its head), which were found a little further up the M s on the site of the Fatih Camii, and are now in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum. (Chapter Six, Figure 2. Evangelist from the Fatih Camii, ca. AD 475, Istanbul Arkeologi Müzeleri.) These marble busts, sculpted almost in the round and leaning out of their medallion frames have until now been left out of the art historical discourse for want of a context, but they clearly belong with the panels of the St. Polyeuktos templon, and they probably had a similar 174

of the older impressionistic style. Mary stands somewhat apart in the group, representing a variation on the pleated style. In spite of the battering of her face it is clear that the maphorion veil around her head was tucked under the heavy mantle wrapped around her shoulders. It is a thick material, more like a blanket than clothing, which forms a pouch in front to carry her Child, graphically symbolizing how she carried Christ within her body. The arms of her tunic are a different, silky material, not found elsewhere in the set. It should be noticed too that the extra thickness of the panels of Mary and the Christ distinguishes them from the other eight panels, Mary being .095 cm. and Christ .085 cm. against an average thickness of .058 for the other panels. This suggests some special placement of these two panels on the templon, very likely over doors to the sanctuary, as we will argue. Beyond the style, the iconography of the St Polyeuktos panels further confirms Harrison’s sixth century date. Apostle F, who must be identified as St Peter, appears in the classic Early Christian iconography of that saint, carrying the cross of his martyrdom. St Peter is represented repeatedly in this pose in the fifth century sarcophagi of Ravenna and Constantinople, as well as in the famous painted icon of St Peter in Sinai, to which we will return.20 Different media shared the same iconography. It appeared outside of Constantinople in the fifth century ivory panel in Kikka, Cyprus21 and in the representation of the Ascension in the Rabbula Gospel, fol. 12, 586AD. Mary’s panel too employs an iconography that must be dated to early Byzantine art. In third place, the close resemblance of the whole St Polyeuktos program to the templon in Saint Sophia reinforces the early date, as we will see.

function. The Fatih Camii was the site of Justinian’s great fivedomed church of the Apostles, 536-550, which was preceded on the site by a cross-plan church of Constantius (337-61). The busts may be from some intermediate refurnishing in the late fifth century. In massing, the powerful massing of the chest of the Fatih Evangelist is closest to Apostle E of Saint Polyeuktos. They exhibit a similar way of holding the book, a similar looseness of the neckline, and a similar informality in the wrapping of the mantle. One might even compare the handling of the Fatih Apostle’s eyes to Apostle A, the only figure still preserving an eye at Saint Polyeuktos. This detail in turn might be compared to the eyes of the only other “figure” carvings in the decoration of St. Polyeuktos, namely the peacocks, with their very human, heavy lids and drilled pupils. (Chapter Six, Figure 4-5. Peacock from a niche of Saint Polyeuktos, AD 520-27. Istanbul Arkeoloogi Müzeleri.) The hair style of the Polyeuktos bust is somewhat different: the Fatih Evangelist has locks pushed back in separate masses over the forehead and distinct little S curls in the beard, while the hair and beard of Polyeuktos Christ is carefully groomed straight with a comb. This first, older style of Polyeuktos includes the relief panels A, B, E, and F. The second Polyeuktos style might be called the more progressive style and the Christ is the outstanding piece in this group. This style reduces the garments to neat, flat pleats in parallel curves (Christ, Mary, Apostles B, D, and G).19 This formal pleated style defines the direction Byzantine sculpture was moving in the sixth century had it not been interrupted by the steep downturn in the Byzantine economy in the late sixth century. The style is elegant, characterized by crisp sharp lines and smooth surfaces, with none of the rumble-crumble 175

Evangelist from the Fatih Camii, c. 500 AD. Istanbul Archaeological Museum. No. xxxx.[Museum photo.] Apostle C, from templon of Saint Polyeuktos, 520-27 AD, Istanbul, Arkeoloji Müzeleri, no. 6176 [38 x 34 x 6.5 cm.]. Photo. by Elizabeth Harrison [Photo. Harrison]

Apostle A from templon of Saint Polyeuktos, 520-27 AD, Istanbul, Arkeoloji Müzeleri, no. 6177 [37.5 x 33 x 7cm.]. Photo. by Elizabeth Harrison [Photo. Harrison] Apostle E, from templon of Saint Polyeuktos, 520-27 AD, Istanbul, Arkeoloji Müzeleri, no. 6182 [21 x 41.5 x 6 cm.]. Photo. by Elizabeth Harrison [Photo. Harrison]

Of the structure of the church of St Polyeuktos above its foundations only a single fallen pier was preserved in the 12th century destruction of the building, but Harrison made a likely hypothesis for the overall appearance of the church, placing the ornate Peacock niches on either side of the domed central space of the nave.22 However, in reconstructing the templon within this nave space Harrison anachronistically ran the barrier of the sanctuary across the nave in a straight line. The typical Early Christian chancel had a rectangular plan enclosing the altar in front of the apse of the church, as confirmed in Constantinople examples at the Stoudios basilica, the hexagon of St Euphemia, and Saint Sophia itself. The straight side-to-side plan is not introduced until 176

Apostle F, Peter from templon of Saint Polyeuktos, 520-27 AD, Istanbul, Arkeoloji Müzeleri, no. 6178 [37 x 34 x 6 cm.]. Photo. by Elizabeth Harrison [Photo. Harrison]

Saint Peter, 540-50 AD. Sinai, St Catherine’s Monastery, icon no. Bxxxx [92.8 x 53.1 cm.] [Photo. Princeton Weitzmann Archive]

Middle Byzantine times when church plans are much more compact.23 He also omitted to show his proposed placement of the relief icons on the templon. The original placement of the St Polyeuktos templon icons can be deduced from the successive steps visible in the iconoclasts’ destructive attack. (Chapter Six, Figure 17. Reconstruction of the templon and ambo of Saint Polyeuktos, AD 520-27, T. Mathews. Sketches submitted.) The first step in the attack was the removal of the panels from their frames. The fact that the panels were smooth on the reverse indicates they were not cemented directly to the wall, and along the edges one sees evidence of the plaster and frame fittings, from which the iconoclasts forcibly pried them loose with crowbars or chisels. The framing evidence is especially clear in an unpublished photograph of Mary’s panel taken before the piece was cleaned for deposit in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum. The black and white photograph also seems to reveal a change in coloration between the bare border that had been covered by the frame and the background area of the figure, and this might be evidence that the background was originally painted.24 Harrison reports a blue painted background surrounding the great majuscule letters of the inscription. In Egypt in early Byzantine times limestone reliefs commonly employed painted grounds emphasizing the

figures.25 In three wooden relief panels from Egypt, discussed below, the figures were surrounded with black or deep blue backgrounds. The second step in the iconoclasts’ destruction can be found in the square hole at the lower center of every image, which was meant to receive a bronze pin or hook for hanging a lamp. Lamps were a token of veneration and many lamp chains and lamp fragments turned up in the excavation.26 The iconoclasts removed the hooks forcibly, splitting the marble plaques in half. This violence physically annihilated the cult of the panels, and the bronze itself could then be melted 177

Christ Teaching from templon of Saint Polyeuktos, 520-27 AD, Istanbul, Arkeoloji Müzeleri no. 6175, [38 x 35 x 8 cm.]. Photo. by Elizabeth Harrison. [Photo. Harrison]

Apostle B, from templon of Saint Polyeuktos, 52027 AD, Istanbul, Arkeoloji Müzeleri, no. 6173 [38 x 35 x 6cm.]. Photo. by Elizabeth Harrison [Photo. Harrison] Apostle D, from templon of Saint Polyeuktos, 52027 AD, Istanbul, Arkeoloji Müzeleri, no. 6179 [36 x 34 x 5 cm.]. Photo. by Elizabeth Harrison [Photo. Harrison]

178

The Christ Child in Mary’s Embrace from templon of Saint Polyeuktos, 520-27 AD, Istanbul, Arkeoloji Müzeleri, no. 6174 [36 x 36x 9.5 cm.]. Photo. by Elizabeth Harrison.[Photo. Harrison]

Apostle G, from templon of Saint Polyeuktos, 52027 AD, Istanbul, Arkeoloji Müzeleri, no. 6181 [21.5 x 22 x 6 cm.]. Photo. by Elizabeth Harrison [Photo. Harrison] Apostle H, from templon of Saint Polyeuktos, 52027 AD, Istanbul, Arkeoloji Müzeleri, no. 3687 [16.7 x 43x 4 cm.]. Photo. by Elizabeth Harrison [Photo. Harrison]

179

Templon of Saint Sophia. 562 AD. T. Mathews Reconstruction [Jaca Book artist drawing from T. Mathews Reconstruction]

180

down for sale or reuse. The provision of lamps also verifies the precise cultic situation of the panels, for the traditional arrangement of placing lamps before the images required that the images themselves be placed somewhere up high, to allow room for the dangling lamps to shed their light on the images. Harrison suggested that the two-part pier-colonnettes found at St. Polyeuktos, similar to those of St Euphemia and St John of Stoudios, must have supported an architrave as did the colonnettes of these other churches, which would have been suitable to carry the figurative panels on top.27 Precisely how the relief panels were framed and mounted on the architrave is not clear; numerous marble frame mouldings were found, but Harrison omitted the scale in his drawings of these mouldings, making their re-assembly with the relief panels difficult.28 Finally the Iconoclasts, not content with simply removing the panels, which would obviously have sufficed to discontinue their objectionable cult, battered and hammered out the faces of all the figures in an outpouring of frightful rage. This is very significant. Had the images been intended only as a catechetical listing of the Apostles for simple informationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

sake they might have been spared this fate. But the iconoclasts saw the figures as objects of active cult, and their reaction was passionate. The figures were alive and had to be executed. Significantly the Peacocks were included in the iconoclast assault, their bodies being broken at their feet from the niches while the niches remained, being structurally integral to the walls. The Peacocks were not imagined to be decoration but part of the cultic program with the icons. A closer iconographic reading of the St Polyeuktos panels introduces further important information that must assessed along with the same or parallel issues posed by the Saint Sophia templon icons. At present we notice that none of the figures have inscriptions and only Christ and Mary have haloes. More interestingly, in addition to Christ, five of the St Polyeuktos Apostles carry books (A, B, C, E, and G), whereas only four of them could have been Evangelists. Whether or how to include Evangelists in the counting of the twelve Apostles is a recurring problem in Christian iconography. Equally significant is another detail of iconography hitherto un-noticed. Five of the Apostles (A, B, C, E, and F) are shown wearing the omorphorion, the distinctive narrow band of 181

The Frieze of Saints from the Emesa Vase, sixth century. Paris, Musée du Louvre, Bj 1895. [Museum photo.]

The Holy Apostles on the Templon of Assumption Cathedral, Moscow, ﬁfteenth century AD. [Photo. Paris Bibliothèque Byzantine].

of the Apostles we have seen are common trait of Egyptian gods in our corpus emphasizing their interest in listening to their suppliants’ prayers.

THE SILENTIARY’S TEMPLON PROGRAM OF SAINT SOPHIA The chancel of St Polyeuktos evidently survived for two centuries until iconoclasm reached its peak of violence directly after the Council of Hieria (754). It was at this point also that the sixth century mosaic icon of the Presentation in the Temple was walled over in the church of the Kalenderhane, just the other side of the M s from St Polyeuktos. At Saint Sophia, on the other hand, the templon icons seem to have survived the Iconoclasts’ destruction because of the clause protecting precious church furnishings that was included in the proceedings of the Iconoclasts’ Council of Hieria in 754.31 Evidently the reliefs of St Polyeuktos, being of stone, were not covered by that clause. The program of saints in rondels of silver on the Emesa Vase in the Louvre may suggest the original appearance of the Saint Sophia icons,32 but nothing survives today of the icons themselves. (Chapter Six, Figure 19. Frieze of Saints in silver relief, the Emesa Vase in 360°, sixth century, Musée du Louvre, Bj1895) However, the careful observation of all the surfaces of the church by Robert Van Nice, Rowland Mainstone, and myself has made it possible to trace the plan of the rectangular sanctuary across the green “rivers” of the pavement.33 Mainstone observed the location of the architrave where it abutted the piers is visible in modern patches in the revetment of the eastern piers either side of the sanctuary.34 Following the reconstruction of Mainstone, repeated substantially in Fobelli, we must imagine the placement of the icons on the architrave. (Chapter Six, Figure 18, Templon of Saint Sophia, Reconstruction drawing by Mathews after Mainstone.) The Silentiary counted twelve columns which must be placed six across the front and four on either side (the two corner columns being common to the front and sides), with a door in the center bay of the front and each side. Paul the Silentiary’s poetic description of the chancel in archaic dactylic hexameters may be too ornate for modern taste, but it is a literary source of un-impeachable purity with respect to the subsequent Iconoclast debate; no one has proposed an eighth century re-editing of the Silentiary.35 The literary genre is called “ekphrasis,” the rhetorical description of a work of art, but the form could serve a variety of purposes. The epic description of Saint Sophia’s sanctuary was recited during the celebration of the re-dedication of the church at Christmas 562, but it is more than entertain-

white wool over their shoulders, which is placed under their mantles but over their tunics.29 Whether originally these were made more obvious by the addition of color we cannot say, but their outlines are distinct from the folds of the tunics underneath. Mentioned around AD 400, the omorphorion is earliest documented, specifically ecclesiastical vestment, introduced to distinguish bishops,30and it gains popularity in the fifth and sixth centuries. These clues to the interpretation of the whole templon set we will weigh along with the evidence from Saint Sophia’s templon. It is not impossible that the templon iconography of St Polyeuktos owed some debt to Alexandria, in view of the fact that the niched architecture of St Poyeuktos itself seems to belong to McKenzie’s definition of the Late Antique style of Alexandria. The exaggerated ears 182

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ment literature, for it takes on some of the characteristics of both an official temple record of offerings (anath mata) and a dedication piece. As in the temple lists of anath mata in Oxyrynchus Papyrus 1449 or the Delos inscriptions, the Silentiary felt obliged to record the exact numbers and to identify the precise materials involved in Justinian’s gifts to the Lord. And as in the dedicatory inscriptions of the Greek Anthology, the Silentiary had to put into elegant poetic form the prayer of the dedicant Justinian. Mango, intending his translation for the secular eyes of moderns, carefully excised all passages of religious sentiment as being un-factual. This, however, subverts the intention of the poem. The dedicatory inscription on an offering, we have seen, could be a simple prose note naming the person who made the offering and expressing his intention with the abbreviated formula ep’ agath . But the Greek Anthology demonstrates that on a more elevated level the dedicant could employ poets of the calliber of Claudianos, Neilos Scholasticus, or Agathias, to raise the tone of an icon’s dedication36. The poem then became part of the offering, inscribed when possible on the frame of the offered icon, and the dedicant had to subsidize the poet’s commission of the piece. The Silentiary’s poetic conceit of casting his entire narrative in the archaic dactylic hexameters of Homer was meant by the author (and the dedicant) to convey to the educated reader or listener that what Justinian had accomplished in Saint Sophia was no less an achievement than the splendid monuments of the ancient Greeks, which were always ardently admired by the Byzantines. One should also consider the special sacredness of the language itself, for Homer was in many regards the bible of the Ancient world. It is as if one were to write a piece today with the “thee’s and thou’s” of the King James Bible. The Silentiary’s choice of idiom involved him in some awkward expressions and even slight inaccuracies. For example, instead of the Christian terms for the clergy which would have sounded intrusive in Homeric verse, the Silentiary calls the priests myst s. “the initiated.” Or, the reader in the liturgy, who was in fact the “deacon,” since the word is not in Homer’s vocabulary, the Silentiary calls him simply a “priest.” More significant, the term theotokos for Mary could not be used, because it has too many consecutive short syllables for Homeric scansion and the Silentiary had to find expressive circumlocutions. But the awkwardness of some of his expressions, and his poetic terminology for Euclidian solid geometry, is a sign how hard he was striving to describe accurately an artistic achievement that exceeded his chosen Homeric vehicle. Once untangled, his language is found to convey an accurate, carefully tooled description of the complex, interlocking spherical shapes of the vaults, a faithful count of its columns on the main and gallery levels, and a close identification of the incredible diversity of rich colored materials in the building.

The revetment of the architectural elements of the sanctuary, said by Procopius to have amounted to 40,000 pounds of silver, made a climax, a holy of holies, for the splendid building.37 Having described the sanctuary as a rectangle of twelve columns in front of the great apse of the church the Silentiary is vague about the exact distribution of the iconsbut he is sufficiently detailed to convey a comprehensive understanding of the program of icons as the oval-framed reliefs which were located on the architrave. Mango’s translation of the key passage contains the essential data on the templon. “Not only upon the walls which separate the priest from the choir of singers has he set plates of naked silver, but the columns too, six sets of twain in number, he has completely covered with the silver metal, and they send forth their rays far and wide. Upon them the tool wielded by a skilled hand has artfully hollowed out discs more pointed than a circle, within which it has engraved the figure of the immaculate God who, without seed, clothed himself in human form. Elsewhere (the tool) has carved the host of winged angels bowing down their necks, for they are unable to gaze upon the glory of God, though hidden under a veil of human form—He is still God, even if he has put on the flesh that removes sin. Elsewhere the sharp steel has fashioned those former heralds of God by whose words, before God had taken on flesh the divine tidings of Christ’s coming spread abroad. Nor has the artist forgotten the images of those who abandoned the many labours of their life—the fishing basket and the net—and those evil cares in order to follow the command of the heavenly King, fishing even for men and, instead of casting for fish, spread out the nets of eternal life. And elsewhere art has depicted the Mother of God, the vessel of eternal life, whose holy womb did nourish its own Maker.”38 The figures mentioned by the Silentiary amount to a fairly extensive program. The repeated and rather unimaginative use of the word “elsewhere” (allothi) indicates that the poet is not giving us a systematic reading of the iconography but is jumping about as the themes suggested themselves. As architectural historians, Xydis and Mainstone excused themselves from sorting out the iconography. Nevertheless their architectural reconstruction accommodates remarkably well the Silentiary’s data on the iconography. The Silentiary gives us a sanctuary of “twice six” or twelve columns. Placing a tondo icon over each column, with two over the columns that turn the corners and one tondo over each of the intercolumniation, the reconstruction would call for a total of twenty-five icons. The three portals would be counted among the intercolumniations, at the center of each of the three sides. This is illustrated in our reconstruction drawing. Counting the number of icon subjects mentioned by the Silentiary, he clearly mentions separate icons of Christ and of the Child in the lap of his Mother. Then he mentions the 184

straight across the nave of the church, with a single portal on the central axis. (Chapter Six, Figure 20. Templon beam of Selçikler. Nezih Firatli) (Sixth century templons were not organized around the Deesis. John the Baptist is not represented, neither among the surviving icons of St Polyeuktos nor in the description of Paul the Silentiary for Saint Sophia, and Mary does not turn toward Christ in prayer, neither in her surviving panel from Polyeuktos nor in the poem of the Silentiary. Rather she holds the Christ Child directly in front of her on her lap. The panel of Christ must have occupied the center position over the front portal of the chancel screen among the panels of the Apostles. This was the longest side of the chancel. Therefore the Mary panel was not beside the Christ panel but must have been over one of the side portals. The Mary panel, it must be observed, was first and foremost an image of her Son. Art historians have the habit of reducing Christ to an “attribute” of his Mother, calling the image the Virgin and Child, but one ought rather to turn the title inside out and refer to the image as the Child Christ in the Eembrace of his Mother.41 Like the image of Christ among the Apostles, it is a “theophany,” a vision of God’s appearance in human form. It is the image par excellence of the Incarnation, the moment of the arrival of God within the human race. Like the image of the adult Christ flanked by his Apostles, it was one of the favourite subjects of apse decoration in the early Church from Rome to Bawit.42 Our hypothesis is that the complete templon program, both at Saint Sophia and St Polyeuktos, made portal images out of the three most important visions of Christ, which had become popular subjects in apses, and this is what gave logic and coherence to the whole templon. The Silentiary’s description mentions the two of these subjects explicitly and alludes to the third. This arrangement of three entrances would make the altar space rather than the apse space the focus of all the congregation’s attention, which may incidentally explain why the Sophia apse itself contained no figural representation in the sixth century, something which has puzzled many an art historian. In this reconstruction the front of the chancel enunciated the principal theme of the program namely the “Ecclesiastical Christ” who governs the Church through his Apostles. This is the theme of the authority of the divinely inspired hierarchy of the Church, which is largest unified subject of Early Christian art from Rome to Egypt. The second portal theme, on the left or north side of the church, was the Incarnation of Christ on the lap of Mary. This mystery of the unity of his Humanity and Divinity, under discussion at the Second Council of Constantinople (553), was presented on the templon screen with angelic witnesses with bowed heads on either side (according to the Silentiary). The third remaining portal theme would have been Christ, the eternal wisdom of God, as witnessed

Apostles, who must have been twelve. The twelve would have included the Evangelists Matthew and John, but if to fill out the number of Evangelists one would have added Mark and Luke, who are not listed among the Aposstles, the group of Apostles/Evangelists becomes fourteen. The Angels bowing their heads in reverence on the Saint Sophia templon should have been four to suggest the “hosts” in the Silentiary’s language. In Fıratlı’s tenth-century templon beam of Selçikler there are four angels inscribed as Michael, Gabriel, Raphel, and Uriel. It is quite possible that the figures at Saint Sophia were also accompanied by labels. Labels were customary in Christian panels of sixth century Egypt, as we will see, and without labels it is difficult to understand how the Silentiary would have been able to distinguish the Apostles from the Prophets, who immediately precede them in his enumeration and who would have been dressed very like the Apostles. If the Silentiary’s prophets, those “earlier heralds who spread abroad the word of Christ before his birth in the flesh,” also amounted to four, one might say that the total program described by the Silentiary amounted to twenty-four icons in the architrave, missing only one of the twenty-five called for in our counting of the architectural frames, a difference which will turn out to be significant.

THE THREEFOLD PROGRAM OF THE TEMPLON ICONS St Polyeuktos witnessed a similar but also somewhat divergent total program from that described by the Silentiary at Saint Sophia. The most obvious divergence between the two is the Silentiary’s addition of textile icons of golden silk adorning the altar at Saint Sophia, of which no evidence survives at St Polyeuktos.39 But there are divergences in the templon icons as well. The logical starting point in unravelling the program(s) of the two churches must be the two icons of Christ and Mary, the damaged survival of both of which at St Polyeuktos is especially fortunate. It is extremely significant that the two programs, in spite of the diversity of their evidence, archaeological and literary, agree in distinguishing these two icons. In Middle Byzantine templon programs, such as Fıratlı’s well documented tenth century program at Selcikler, with inscribed names, the core of the program is a unit called the Deesis, the “intercession.”40 This unit places Mary and John the Baptist in attitudes of prayer, next to and turned inwards toward the central enthroned image of Christ. The rest of the program expands right and left first with Angels and then Apostles. By contrast one must first observe that the sixth century templon program at Saint Sophia and St Polyeuktos had quite a different architecture in that it was three-sided with three portals while the Selçikler templon ran 185

by the prophets, above all in the Ezekiel vision, to which we will return below. Christ, the new-born and everlasting Word is the theme of several icon or apse inscriptions grouped together in the Greek Anthology under attributions to Claudian and Marinos, whose original locations are lost.43 The three templon portals carried major themes of apse decoration in the early church and their relocation on the templon in the sixth century represents a major restructuring of Christian iconography, not acknowledged by art historians. The climax of Justinian’s program at Saint Sophia was the golden altar table, on which was conducted the most sacred act of Christian worship, the offering of the bread and wine of the Eucharist. The Silentiary does not simply describe the altarcloth but narrates how the clergy, in preparing for the Divine Liturgy, spread out the textile icons of golden embroidered silk, “as the sacred law commands,” as if the opening of the cloth was a rite of special significance in the liturgy. The principal composition on the altarcloth repeated exactly the iconography of the Christ, Peter, and Paul icons that we found in nearby St Polyeuktos. Paul Silentiarius says that Christ on the altarcloth is “stretching out the fingers of his right hand as if preaching His immortal words, while in his left he holds the book of divine message—the book which tells what He, the Lord, accomplished with provident mind when His foot trod the earth.” This matches precisely the Christ icon of Saint Polyeuktos. To one side of him, Silentiarius continues, stands Paul, holding his “book pregnant with holy ordinance,” and on the other Peter, who holds “the form of the cross on a golden staff.” Again Silentiarius’ words match exactly the iconography of the icons of the saints at Saint Polyeuktos. We will return to the Peter icon, but the correspondence between the icons at Saint Sophia and St Polyeuktos demonstrates that the design of the program of templon icons was going forward on a more general basis than just the Cathedral decoration. Finally, on the other side of the altarcloth, that is the side facing the bishop’s throne and the synthronon of the clergy, were represented Christ and his Mother joining the hands of the imperial couple. An icon, certainly in mosaic, of the same espousal composition was placed in Justinian’s great foundation of St John in Ephesus.44 In addition, along the border of the altarcloth were embroidered the miracles of Christ and the charitable foundations of Justinian and Theodora. Art historians greet the coinage of Justinian II 692-95 as a courageous iconographic innovation, in that it placed the image of Christ the teacher on the face of the gold solidus and the emperor’s own image on the reverse.45 But the patriarch Eutychios had already done better: he had placed Christ the teacher framed by Sts Peter and Paul wrapping around the front and sides of the altar of Saint Sophia, and on the reverse he had placed the espousal image of Justinian and Theodora.

The Christ between Peter and Paul enjoyed wide circulation, especially in Rome in the fifth century. The political meaning was certainly not missed, but it was Church politics, asserting Constantinople’s claim to primacy among the ancient patriarchates. This was 77 years before the first appearance of Islam and 129 years before Justinian II’s coinage. These textile icons of Saint Sophia were cultic in the highest degree of that term, being intimately associated with the essential liturgical act, called the Anaphora, or offering, of the Eucharist. The devout venerated icons and the Eucharist together: one’s adoration was not to be partitioned. One placed the Sacrament on the altar on the golden textile icons, while on the templon barrier which surrounded the altar a great circle of gleaming silver icons enclosed the Sacrament. The neglected evidence from St Polyeuktos doubles the information supplied by the Silentiary about the very first creation of the Byzantine templon icon program. The subsequent development of the program of the templon can be traced in the sculpted Deesis beams of the 10th - 11th centuries in Anatolia and the painted icon beams of the 12th century at St Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai and then ultimately in the Russian high iconostases. (Chapter Six, Figure 21, The Apostles on the Templon of the Iconostasis of Assumption Cathedral, Moscow, fifteenth century AD.) Alongside this information on the innovation of Constantinopolitan icon use we will follow the recent evidence of icons on the templons in Egypt. Vert an s theological argument of the continuity of Christian with Jewish icon use we will take up further on. Imagery and Liturgical Drama in the Sixth Century One cannot avoid the task of situating this grand artistic innovation in the context of the great theological debate on Monophysitism that came to a head in Constantinople in the Fifth Ecumenical Council, the Second Council of Constantinople, 553. This necessarily involves following closely the role of St. Eutychios whom Justinian had appointed precisely to preside over the Council and whose firm opposition to Justinian’s subsequent drift into Monophysitism led to his dismissal a decade later in 565. Eutychios was a man of firm convictions. His treatise attacking the Monophysite interpretation of the Trisagion hymn is lost, as is the Emperor’s own edict in support of Monophysitism published after the Council. As bishop, Eutychios had the responsibility of overseeing the decoration of the Cathedral. His disciple Eustratios wrote his Life, as yet un-translated, with many clues about his personality among the plethora of miracle stories, which should not be neglected. In a recent study Derek Krueger has made some interesting inferences from Eutychios’ authorship of a communion hymn, a kontakion: which begins to clarify Eutychios’ role in larger evolution of Byzantine dogma and liturgical piety.46 So as not to mistake the trees for the forest, however, it is 186

important to look at both the imagery and the development of Christian thought in their largest dimensions. The templons of St Polyeuktos and Saint Sophia exhibit large-scale programmatic organization, the first and largest unit of which is the college of the Apostles gathered around Christ. This is the grandest single composition of early Christian art and it is given dramatic expression in the performance of the liturgy by the seating of the clergy around their bishop on the synthronon,47 The iconography expresses the intense Christian preoccupation with ecclesiastical hierarchy, church unity, and apostolic continuity. In the earliest period of the Church, that is in the immediately post-apostolic period, the Pauline letters already refer to the Apostles as the foundation of the Church (Ephesians 2:20). At the end of the first century Clement of Rome and Justin Martyr refer to the Apostles as the first bishops of the church. In theological language the belief that the ministry and authority of the Christian Church derived from the Apostles by the continuity in the succession of bishops from Christ’s original appointment of the Twelve is referred to as the doctrine of “Apostolic Succession.” 48 Many of the great sees claimed one of the Apostles as their founder. Alexandria claimed Mark, Jerusalem claimed James, the brother of the Lord, Rome and Antioch both claimed Peter and Paul, Edessa claimed Thomas, and Ephesus claimed John. One may interpret individual icons as supportive of these claims to an authentic connection with Christ. As we have seen, the earliest Christian icon on record was the icon of the Apostle/ Evangelist John, as documented in the Acts of John. His icon gave authenticity and authority to the Christian community of Ephesus and Smyrna. It gave the Ephesus church a special status. But the templon programs insisted instead on the corporate authority of the apostles as a body. There were tendancies among Gnostic communities to isolate a single apostle as the transmitter of Christ’s teachings to the exclusion of the others. The Ebionites denied the authority of any Gospel except Matthew, the Marcionites singled out Paul, the Valentinians, John. But the Church’s tradition, formed by Origen and Clement of Alexandria in the second century, insisted on a broader definition of the catholic tradition and this lies behind the Early Christian representation of the Apostles as a group, as the “college” of the Apostles. Clear references to this doctrine of Apostolic Succession are to be found in the iconography of the panels of St Polyeuktos and Saint Sophia. At St. Polyeuktos the carrying of the book, we noticed, is not an Evangelist’s prerogative; at least five of the Apostles carried a codex (A, B, C, E, and G) and the vandalized hand of Apostle D seems to have carried a scroll, making him a likely candidate for St Paul carrying his Epistles. This leaves only Peter (F) without a book because he carries the cross of his martyrdom.. In the Chapel 6 of

Bawit, in the Coptic Museum of Cairo all twelve of the Apostles are clutching a book over their heart. The carrying of Gospel books transforms Apostles into other “Christ’s.” At St Polyeuktos they are shown imitating the Christ of the center panel, who similarly carries his book in his left and instructs with his right. The Apostles are literally “the sent ones” in the Greek word apostolos, entrusted with the unique mission of disseminating and interpreting the Gospel of Christ. Equally striking in the iconography of St. Polyeuktos is the assignment of the omophorion to at least five of the surviving Apostles. A detail that escaped Harrison, the omophorion is the earliest attested distinctively liturgical vestment, being mentioned ca. 400 by Isisdore of Pelusium.49 A narrow strip of material, originally wool, it was worn over the shoulders on top of the tunic and beneath the mantle. At St Polyeuktos it may have been made more visible by painting, but it appears as distinct from the folds of the tunic in the panels of Apostles A, B, C, E, and F, of whom F is Saint Peter. The omophorion gains popularity in the fifth century to designate a bishop, both in Latin and Greek churches, but here it is most unusually assigned to the prototypes of the bishops, that is the original Apostles.50 Its wool carried an allusion to the sheep that the Good Shepherd, Christ, carried on his shoulders. We therefore discover a remarkable triple playacting in the images: first Christ himself played the part of the Good Shepherd of his own parable, then the Apostles played the part of Christ in teaching and carrying his Gospel, and finally here in the templon reliefs the Apostles are seen playing the part of contemporary bishops by wearing their omophorion. Fingering the lamb’s wool on his breast the bishop reminded himself of his duties as shepherd of his flock. When the clergy gathered together for the Divine Liturgy within the the templon icons they were to be regarded as the Apostles themselves. This also reinforced their authority when assembled in the ecumenical council to interpret the authentic message of Christ, as occurred shortly after the placement of these icons. In church law the bishops were the court of last appeal and they could not be over-ruled by emperors or princes. Justinian might convoke the bishops to deliberate but he could not prescribe their conclusions. It is significant that the Apostles are not shown writing or reading but carrying their books before them, and Apostles A, C, and E wrap the book in their mantles as a gesture of honor. This constitutes another play-acting dimension, for this is exactly the way the deacon carried (and still carries) the Gospel in the ceremony of the First Entrance of the daily Divine Liturgy, as well as in the rare ceremony of the opening of an ecumenical council. Again it is Paul the Silentiary who provides the most vivid account of this dramatic action in the Divine Liturgy. The Divine Liturgy has two grand parts marked by proces187

The St Polyeuktos templon image representing the Child Christ in his Mother’s arms has not yet entered the bibliography of Byzantine studies.56 Especially interesting is the relation of the image to the canonical Marian imagery that emerged in the Blachernai half a century earlier, for the interest in Mary’s dress continues to be paramount. There it was her maphorion, mark of her modesty, now it is her mantle or himation, mark of her motherhood. The image is conspicuously non-narrative; it does not illustrate Christ’s birth (shown by the manger, as in Luke 2:7), it does not tell the story of the Magi (of Mt 2:1-12), nor does it show Mary’s nursing (referred to in Luke 11:27 and described in the Protevangelium). It illustrates the Mother-Child relationship by a perfectly simple frontal composition. In composition this resembles several of the images that came into popularity in the post-Blachernai period, but with significant peculiarities. It is especially close to the Berlin ivory in the way Mary holds her Child by placing her right hand on his right shoulder and seating him on her left hand which extends from under her mantle, showing the tunic on her forearm. However Mary is enthroned in the Berlin image but in the Polyeuktos image she stands; and while in both images Virgin’s maphorion is tucked in under the mantle around her neck in the Polyueuktos icon the mantle has been drawn into a fold in Mary’s left hand creating a kind of pouch for the Child to sit in. This is very unusual. The Child is seated in and emerging from his Mother in a very graphic way. Her mantle has become a metaphor of her body. Searching to understand the image, one must not miss the precision of Paul the Silentiary’s language describing the Incarnation. Although Homeric scansion would not permit him to use the term theotokos (three short syllables in succession are not allowed in dactylic hexameters) he says that in the Incarnation God “has clothed Himself in human form” and “has put on the flesh that removes sin.” In order to un-do the fall of man He had to take the bodily form of man. Consequently Mary, he continues, reversed the natural order of things, becoming the “vessel of eternal life, whose holy womb did nourish its own Maker.” Not the least accommodation to Monophysitism is to be found in his language. According to the Three Chapters, which were endorsed by the Fathers of the second Council of Constantinople as they met under Eutychios’ presidency, the Nestorians had departed from the true faith in seeking various ways of phrasing the MotherChild relationship that would distinguish God the Word from Christ the man, calling Mary Christotokos (Christ-begetter) rather than Theotokos (God-begetter) [canon 6, 218 and 14, 227]. The Mary of the Silentiary was perceived as enunciating the same truth as the Council had expressed, and the artist found a cloth metaphor for this truth.. Like the Christ among the Apostles, Christ in Mary’s lap was

sions of popular involvement called Entrances which even today characterize the liturgies of the Christian East. In the first or instructional part, called the Liturgy of the Catechumens, according to Paul the Silentiary’s Descriptio Ambonis, the reading of the Gospel was done from the grand pulpit or ambo with stairs mounting from east and west, which the author describes as an island in the middle of the nave, surrounded with a sea of boisterous lay people. Harrison’s excavations, we noted, located the foundations of such an ambo in the exact center of the nave of St Polyeuktos.51 From the Silentiary’s account Mainstone has reconstructed the ambo of Saint Sophia.52 The “wise books,” Paul the Silentiary tells us, were stored beneath the ambo “whence they are carried up” for the reading by the deacon, whom Paul calls loosely a “priest.”53 In a world where literacy was largely restricted to the civil service and the clergy, the recitation of the ipsissima verba of the Savior from the top of the ambo must have carried exceptional force. The Silentiary describes the popular enthusiasm when the deacon descended from the ambo accompanied by candles and incense, carrying the Gospel along the processional way or solea to the altar. The wall of the solea, says the Silentiary, “was of such height as to reach the girdle of a man standing by. Here the priest who brings the good tidings passes along on his return from the ambo, holding aloft the golden book; and while the crowd strives in honor of the immaculate God to touch the sacred book with their lips and hands, the countless waves of the surging people break around. Thus, like an isthmus beaten by waves on either side, does this space stretch out, and it leads the priest who descends from the lofty crags of this vantage point to the shrine of the holy table.”54 In Arrmenia, Vrt’tanes Kert’oł of Dvin, 604-07 describes the same dramatic exhibition as the entry of Christ into Jerusalem, still another play-acting allusion.55 The Gospel-bearing Apostles in the templon icons hold the book up for the veneration of the beholder as was done in the liturgy. In addition, the same was done in the gathering of the ecumenical council. Indeed in the very first pronouncement of the Second Council of Constantinople the bishops remind the faithful, “We confess that we hold and preach the faith given from the beginning by our great God and Savior Jesus Christ to the holy Apostles and preached by them to the whole world, which the holy fathers also confessed and explained and handed on to the holy churches, and especially those who gathered in the four ecumenical councils, whom we follow and embrace through all and in all.” The mention of the “four” councils re-affirmed the fathers’ commitment to the troublesome decree of the council of Chalcedon including its theotokos terminology. Their decisions must be received, the Council decreed, as the decisions of the Apostles themselves. Mary on the Templon 188

sented in the vision as eternally old as the so-called Ancient of Days.60 The most striking example of the latter is the Sinai icon offered by the monk Philochristos probably on his taking the habit at the monastery: he came to the holy mountain in expectation of sharing in Ezekiel’s vision of Christ. We lack evidence on which of these popular manifestations of the prophetic vision was chosen for the third chancel portal of the Constantinopolitan program, but I suggest that this was the subject of the twenty-fifth icon, the one missing in our count of the icons mentioned by the Silentiary. The concept of surrounding the altars with a circle of icons was a grand and original re-organization of church space and the formulation of the program was conscious and purposeful. One simply cannot imagine that the icons grew up spontaneously like weeds or were placed by there chance, like a jumble of packages left in a railroad station. The new system must be attributed to a dynamic and forceful religious leader and the presumption must be that it was St Eutychios, the patriarch. The decoration of the cathedral was usually the bishop’s responsibility and the bold program at Saint Sophia speaks of Eutychios’ intellectual accomplishment as a theologian, his forceful personality as an administrator, and his special talent in re-shaping the liturgy in a new, theatrical direction. The fact that the Fifth Ecumenical Council failed to achieve the church unity that Justinian had hoped for is not to be blamed on the presidency of Eutychios, but on the irreconcilable stance of the two sides. In pursuing Justinian’s strategy as he set it out in the Three Chapters, Eutychios succeeded quite remarkably in better refining the Chalcedonian position by condemning the “Nestorian” leanings of three theologians. The Council thus re-affirmed the orthodox dogma of the Trinity, declaring that “the Holy Trinity did not undergo the addition of a person or hypostasis when one of the Holy Trinity, God the Logos, became incarnate” and it reconfirmed the Virgin’s role as Theotokos and rejected the term Christotokos. In its anathemas it condemned anyone who maintained that “God the Logos who performed miracles was another than Christ who suffered.”61 But Justinian, who hosted great numbers of Monophysite monks in the imperial palace in Constantinople, seized on this last issue in searching for a further compromise in a doctrine termed “Aphthartodocetism,” literally the belief that Christ’s sufferings were only an “appearance of suffering.” His decree on this subject has been lost and so has Eutychios’ treatise on the subject, but Eutychios’ removal from the patriarchal throne in Constantinople, tells how diametrically opposed their views were. The unique surviving document from the pen of Eutychios, while it seems to be on another subject and is a few years later in date, speaks eloquently of his understanding of aphthartodocetist heresy. The document in question is a short communion chant, a

a very common theme in early Christian apse decoration and her commonest accompaniment was angels.57 The Silentiary refers to angels flanking Mary on the templon of Saint Sophia as “the host of winged angels bowing down their necks, for they are unable to gaze upon the glory of God, though hidden under a veil of human form—He is still God even if He has put on the flesh that removes sin.” The unique advantage of the angels as witnesses of the Incarnation lies in their ability to look both ways. They could perceive the zones of heaven and earth at the same time; they could behold both his Human and his Divine Nature simultaneously. Hence they bow their heads to their God even as they see Him as Child in his Mother’s lap. In other representations of the subject the angels express their recognition of His Divinity with hand gestures of surprise as in the St Lupicin diptych58 or the Roman icon of Sta. Maria in Trastevere.59 The two angels who flank Mary in the Louvre Emesa ewer gently bow their heads toward her, even though the Child is not represented. The number of the attendant angels varies in Early Christian iconography. A final reflection on the clothing of Mother and Child: it is significant that while the child Harpocrates taking the breast of Isis was always naked. Christ, like his Mother, is never shown naked. The Third Portal The Mary icon would have been over the left or north portal of the sanctuary, which was commonly the women’s side of the Byzantine church. In the medieval Byzantine church the Mother of God is usually placed to the left of the main door on the templon screen, Christ to the right. But if in the early program of Saint Sophia and St. Polyeuktos Mary was placed in the icon over the left (north) portal that leaves the question of who occupied the icon of the other side portal. Paul the Silentiary seems to allude to the third portal in his mention of icons of the prophets, “those former heralds of God by whose words before God had taken on flesh, the divine tidings of Christ’s coming spread abroad.” In Christianity, the prophetict vision of Christ most commonly invoked is Ezekiel’s vision, which was explored in a wide variety of ways in some of the most important masterpieces of early Christian art. In Egypt Christ appears eternally young as the ChristEmmanuel, which had precedent in the representations of Horus as the child Harpocrates. This theme is exploited with all the brilliant lighting effects worthy of its visionary character in the fifth century mosaic of Hosios David in Thessalonike, which includes the prophet Ezekiel standing by the River Chobar. There Christ appears in youthful, beardless and even effeminate form encircled by the winged beasts of Ezekiel’s vision. In Rome the same beasts revolve around the Christ-Pantocrator with full-length beard, with the gathering of his Apostles about his throne. Christ could also be repre189

kontakion introduced by Eutychios when he had been reinstated under Justin II 577-78. Some Monphysites objected strenuously to the hymn and the emperor Justin II complained that his new chant was “changing the ancient customs.” Eutychios rejoined sharply, “My Lord, what I composed is far more suitable than the old one.”62 The disputed chant stayed put in the Divine Liturgy where it remains to this day, sung after communion on Holy Thursday. The text reads: “At your mystical supper, Son of God, receive me today as a partaker, for I will not betray the sacrament to your enemies, nor give you a kiss like Judas, but like the thief I confess you: Remember me, Lord, in your kingdom.” Krueger insists that to understand the text one must understand how Byzantine piety was developing in the sixth century by shaping the liturgical experience according to the Biblical typology expressed in the readings of the liturgy. The genius inspiring this special development in the liturgy was the great poet and hymnographer Romanos the Melode. The Byzantine liturgy is commonly regarded as rigidly unchangeable, but in fact, like all human constructs, it too has evolved and developed, and the sixth century was a period of exciting innovation. Romanos was a deacon from Emesa in Syria who came to Constantinople before 518 and served in the church of the Virgin tou Kyrou, identified as the Kalenderhane Camii, and in St Sophia where he composed some 70 or 80 hymns, including, many claim, the masterpiece of Byzantine poetry, the 24-stanza Akathistos, the longest example of the kontakion genre, which addresses the Theotokos under ever-changing images. Romanos invented the genre called the kontakion chant for popular participation. The distinguishing features of the kontakion are refrains for popular recitation and the direct (imagined) dialogue of the lay participants with the holy figures involved in the biblical events. This brought action and drama to the liturgy involving the imagined participation of all in the events being celebrated in the liturgical feasts. Thus in the kontakion composed by Eutychios the participant starts by speaking in the first person, addressing the Son of God directly, asking to be admitted to the privileged company of the Apostles gathered around the table of the Last Supper. Chanting the words of the hymn, the participant promises to be faithful to Christ as Judas was not. Then abruptly switching roles, the participant takes the part of the Good Thief who suffered and died alongside Christ. What more powerful answer could be invented for the Monophysite denial of the reality of Christ’s suffering than taking the role of the Good Thief, imagining oneself hanging on a cross beside Christ and speaking to him the words of Lk 23: 42: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom!” Eutychios’ kontakion thus carries a direct argument on the principal theological issue of the day, not by invoking a theo-

logical syllogism but by invoking an image, the image of one crucified speaking to another crucified. The kontakion was inserted in the liturgy to be sung immediately before receiving Jesus in the sacrament of the Eucharist. The same kind of dramatic argument is pressed home in a detail of iconography, which we have seen is shared by the icons of St Polyeuktos and Saint Sophia, namely the St. Peter Carrying his Cross. This iconography refers to the “Domine, quo vadis?” story of Peter’s crucifixion told in the Acts of Peter and, judging from the diffusion of the image, the story must have been as familiar in Constantinople as it was in Rome. According to the story, Peter, fleeing Rome during Nero’s persecution, encountered Christ on the Appian Way going in the opposite direction, toward Rome. “Where are you going, my Lord,” he asked. “I come to be crucified anew,” Christ answered. Inspired, Peter promptly turned back to accept his own martyrdom on a cross.63 The icons of Peter on the templon at St Polyeuktos and on the altarcloth of St Sophia reminded the viewer of how Peter learned from personal experience the excruciating pain involved in death by crucifixion. The icons strike to the heart of the heresy of aphthartodocetism, the heresy of “the illusion of Christ’s suffering.” Liturgy as Theatre Liturgy at this moment in Byzantine history became theatre, but theatre in which the lay spectators are both the actors and participants, assuming multiple roles as devotion prompts. This can be called the visionary theatre of the liturgy, and it was widely understood in the mid sixth century and even shared by Eutychios’ adversary and stand-in, that is John III Scholasticus, who took his place when Euthchios was sent to exile for insisting on the reality of Christ’s suffering. The historian Cedrenus narrates that in 573-4 Justin II introduced into the liturgy a troparion of great significance called the Cherubikon. This hymn marks the start of the Eucharistic half of the liturgy and it expresses the reaction of the faithful to the second great procession of the Divine Liturgy, the Great Entrance, or Entrance of the Mysteries. Unlike Eutychius’ hymn for Holy Thursday, which was sung only once a year, this addition was, and still is used, at every mass in the year in the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. It was sung moreover at the ceremonially most dramatic moment in the liturgy, when the offerings were crried up to the altar. As Taft reconstructs the rite, deacon(s), carried the bread on paten(s), which they held above their heads, and priest(s) carried the chalice(s), all accompanied by incense and candles.64 In an earlier study I reconstructed the route of this dramatic procession and this has been confirmed and enlarged upon by Taft.65 The route of this procession passed originally from the skeuophylakion, a chapel outside the church building, through the portals and 190

recognized by Brubaker.70 They were always part of Christian worship. We know that lights figured in the rite of Baptism from earliest times, and the sacrament itself was even called the “photismos,” the illumination. The earliest wall paintings in a Christian church, Dura Europus (ca. 250) show women carrying lighted candles to the baptistery which is at the same time the tomb of Christ. The practice of offering lights before images was parallel among pagans and Christians in the second century, as we have observed in the Acts of John. We have noticed the fixings for a lamp before a super-lifesize Isis in the Chapel of the Syncretic Gods in Karanis, and another fourth century cultic niche of Karanis flanked with lamp fittings.71 In a Christian situation in Egypt, contemporary with Paul the Silentiary, a pair of iron lamp-hooks were found either side of an enthroned Mary with Child in House D in Kom el-Dikka, Alexandria. The painting was found in the two-storey inner court of a large domestic establishment. At the Red Monastery in Sohag, we find representations of both lamps and censers hanging before icons, dated by Bolman ca. 600 AD.72 Lighting a lamp involved an offering of oil to God, parallel to the offering of bread and wine on the Eucharistic table. Like the bread and wine which were consumed upon being offered, the oil was consumed in giving light. But by being offered the oil became sacred and the unused portion might be used later for cures. The practice was familiar to Saint Eutychios, as we will see. But to continue with the Silentiary’s account, at Vespers, as the shadows of dusk invaded the vast spaces of Saint Sophia—its nave is the largest interior space in a single span from Antiquity or the Middle Ages—the lamplighters climbed the chancel barrier and threaded their way among the icons on the architrave, setting fire to a veritable forest of lamps, large silver polycandela, designed according to the Silentiary to resemble trees with multiple coronae of lights. Suddenly the icons came to life. One by one a multitude of silver faces gleamed out of the darkness. At that moment the psaltai entoned “O Joyous light,” and the crowd burst into song blessing the light. Besides the Eucharist, cathedral worship included the Divine Office, or the Hours, consisting of Psalms, hymns, and prayers. As carefully reconstructed by liturgists such as Taft, from passages in Tertullian (died ca. 225) and the Apostolic Constitutions (documents of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, assembled in the 4th) the Divine Office was recited in set poses of standing, kneeling, and facing east with up-raised hands. It was celebrated at fixed hours, and at Vespers (called evensong in the Church of England) it included the offering of light, which is one of the very few early Christian rituals outside of the sacraments which has survived to the present day. This is the lucenarium of the cathedral office, which in early

up the nave of the church to the sanctuary. In an extraordinarily bold stroke of theatrical imagination the hymn assigns the participants the role of the Cherubim who circled around the throne of God in Ezekiel’s vision. The Cherubicon was chanted by the people solemnly at a very deliberate pace, under the leadership of psaltai who formed a guard of honor on the solea for the passing of the procession of the Great Entrance. “Let us who mystically represent the Cherubim and who sing the thrice holy chant to the life-giving Trinity put aside all earthly cares to receive the King of all.” Each phrase is very carefully chosen, and especially significant is the Greek word used for “representing” the Cherubim, “eikonizontes,” Taft takes the word simply as “representing,” but it is a relatively new word, first occurring in the fourth century, which gained circulation precisely from its daily use in the Cherubicon, after which John of Damascus found it a suitable term for “representing” sacred figures in art. Etymologically the term makes a verb out of the noun eik n for image or icon. More than simply “representing” it means “icon-izing,” or “becoming icons of,” or “playing the role of the Cherubim.”66 Icons were very much on people’s minds in 573-4 when Cedrenus, alongside the story of the Cherbicon hymn, records that Justin II transferred to Constantinople the miraculous icon of Christ “made not with human hands” from Camoulianai in Cappadocia.67 In the visionary theatre of the liturgy the faithful were invited to imagine themselves to be icons of the Cherubim, who circle around the Lord’s throne in Ezekiel’s vision Ez 1, 1-29. The Cherubim are of fire, with many faces, many eyes, and many wings. Time and space have collapsed in the encounter with the Divine in the liturgy. The troparion takes the faithful back into the eternal past before the coming of Christ, and it is a prayer for worthiness to receive the coming Savior. In more solemn performances of the liturgy subdeacons accompany the gifts carrying fans, called rhipidia or flabellae. The playacting of the liturgy is thus taken a step further by this use of props, for the many-winged Cherubim are both symbolized by and illustrated on the rhipidia. The images of the templon belonged to this dramatic, imaginative context of the liturgy. The faithful imagine themselves to be icons joining the silver faces of the rhipidia accompanying the gifts, or the faces of the templon icons encircling the altar on the Saint Sophia. Paul the Silentiary has given us still further eye-witness information on the visionary theatre of the liturgy in his account of the lamps for Vespers at Saint Sophia.68 Art historians delight in the faithful match of the author’s details to actually surviving many-tiered lamps of bronze and silver from the sixth century. But the liturgical significance of the lighting of the lamps escapes their notice.69 Lamps in church meant more than a certain level of illumination: they were cultic, as 191

Amaseia miracles is full of concrete details. A minor theologian himself,76 Eustratios begins the account of the miracles with a reflection on the necessity of faith for miracles. Citing the disbelief that Christ encountered in Nazareth, when “He did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief,” (Mt; 13:53), Eustratios explains that miracles presume faith on the part of the miracle worker as well as those for whom the miracles are performed. To give his own account greater credibility Eustratios is therefore careful to include the particular circumstances of his stories. In the very first miracle story we are told of a woman grieving over still-born children, who came to the saint for assistance. Besides praying for the husband and wife, Eutychios anointed them both with oil that he took from lamps burning before icons of the Holy Cross and of Mary the Theotokos in the church of St John. Clearly it was believed that the power of icons could be communicated through the oil that had been offered before them. When the woman eventually gave birth to two healthy boys, the first they named Peter (for power of the Holy Cross) and the second John (for the patron of the church). Further stories are told of cures effected the same way or through administration of the bread of the Eucharist. More information can be gleaned from the cure of a painter, included in Mango’s volume of sources. In this account Eustratios tells how a landowner, named Chrysaphios, decided to convert a two-storey piece of property on a hilltop into a church, which he would dedicate to St Michael the Archangel, Michael being a favorite dedication for mountain peaks. Amaseia (now Amasya) is located at the convergence of three rivers, tumbling down from the Pontic Mountains and its topography is characterized by pinnacles and ravines. Chrysaphios called upon a mosaicist to decorate the large hall on the lower story with scenes of the life of the Virgin, but when he started work he discovered it had an earlier decoration with scenes of Aphrodit . Scraping the naked body of the goddess from the wall, the painter’s right arm suddenly became swollen and inflamed and he could not continue. At once the holy man Eutychios was called upon. His “miraculous” intervention might strike a modern observer as little more than sensible medical advice, for his prescription was nothing more exotic than a three day rest for the workman, during which period he anointed his hand with oil and said some prayers for him. But to the religious mind good health was a divine gift and it had to be recognized as such. Therefore, when the recovered painter had finished his chore of decorating the chapel “of our immaculate Lady the Mother of God, forever virgin . . . as a reminder of the miracle that had been performed, the man who had been healed set up the Saint[Eutychios]’s image in that very house where he had been injured: with the same hand that had received healing he depicted his godly physician.”77 This, as we have seen, is the

documents is called expressly the “eucharist of the lighting,” epilychnios eucharistia, meaning the thank-offering of lights.73 Beyond the archaeological evidence of lamps before the templon icons of of St Polyeuktos, the most vivid evidence of the association of lamps with templon images in the era before iconoclasm is Paul Silentiarius description of the templon of Saint Sophia, some thirty nine years after Juliana Anicia’s outfitting of her Saint Polyeuktos church. We have reviewed the counting of these images and tried to explain the theological program, but the Silentiary’s description must be understood in its liturgical setting at Vespers. Although it is not documented in Constantinople at this date, Taft describes the Phos hilaron vespers hymn as one of the earliest extant Christian hymns, so old that St. Basil (d. 379) said he could not identify its author. The hymn is still in use in Vespers today, even in the Church of England, where it is loosely translated “O Gracious Light.” The hymn re-creates another liturgical situation for these icons: it first identifies the light, which the faithful are beholding, as Jesus Christ, the glory of the Father. However, as it unfolds the hymn is cast as addressed to the whole Trinity, and Pelikan takes it as one of the earliest formulae of the doctrine of the Trinity. “O joyous light of the holy glory of the immortal Father, heavenly, holy blessed Jesus Christ! As we come to the setting of the sun and behold the evening light, we praise you Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God! It is fitting at all times that you be praised with auspicious voices, O Son of God, giver of life. That is why the whole world glorifies you!”74 To be faithful to historical sources, our picture of Christian cult must put the diversity of sources together, enlarging the archaeological data with the poetry, prayer, music, and gestures that belonged together in the original experience. The trouble is that scholars usually work by sorting things into boxes: texts belong to the liturgists, images to the art historians, songs to musicologists. But the message of the liturgy is not exhausted in its word content and reading the words is not the same as performing the liturgy. The Sacrament involved all the gestures of a Verdi opera, the participation of the faithful in community processions, in song and response, and in the vision and contact with the presence of the Lord in the Sacrament. St. Eutychios’ Role There is further information on Eutychios’ involvment with icons from the period of his banishment in Amaseia 565-77. The decisive “church-ification” of icons that we have been following in Constantinople did not supplant, but built upon and even confirmed the private practices of the votive offering of icons and the burning of lamps before them, as documented in Eustsratios’ Life of Eutychios during the period of his banishment, 565-77.75 Eustratios’ account of the 192

classic ancient pattern of the Greek votive or thank offering, abundantly documented since archaic times. The reception of a divine favor inspired the painter to make an offering to his “divine” benefactor, even though the benefactor saint happened to be still alive! The traditional thank offering that he offered was an image of the “divine” Eutychios. This account resembles the story of a painter a century earlier who also suffered a withered hand from contact with a pagan image and was cured by recourse to the patriarch Gennadius (458-71).78 They both presume the late endurance of the cult of pagan icons and the problems this posed for artists trying to construct the new Christian pantheon, but the two stories turn out very differently. In the earlier story a painter in Constantinople suffered a withered hand from having painted a Christ to resemble Zeus in order that pagans might secretly continue worshipping the outlawed pagan god. The Amaseia story, on the other hand, is written for the tourist, who in visiting the chapel might naturally be curious why he was finding an icon of the patriarch Eutychios in a cycle of Marian paintings. The story is a kind of anticipation of Titian’s story of Sacred and Profane Love, since in ancient art Aphrodit was never represented except naked, and Mary was absolutely never un-clothed. In the earlier Zeus-Christ icon story the amazing fact is that likeness of Zeus was allowed to remain in the painting; the patriarch cured the painter and approved the pagan iconography for Christ! One might say the conflict between the gods was settled by a syncretism of the two. Quite the contrary in the sixth century contest between the lewd Aphrodit and the modest Mary, Eutychios allowed no compromise. The pagan goddess was mercilessly erased and the painter was rewarded for his bravery. Eutychios meanwhile was rewarded with sainthood by the painter, who offered a votive painting of him in thanksgiving for his cure. The place of living saints in the ranks of icons is thus a further

dimension of the story. Eutychios was still found among the holy icons in the tenth century church in Sebaste (Selçikler) to which we referred earlier, where Nezih Firatli discovered a Deesis templon beam of Christ and the Apostles in which the figure of St. Eutychios appears at the end of the set and is so labeled. Eutychios had become the last Apostle. On another level this was being done even in the saint’s lifetime, as John of Ephesus records the competition between Patriarchs in which John III Scholasticus, on his accession to the throne in Constantinople had replaced images of Eutychios with his own portrait, only to see the process reversed when Eutychios reclaimed the patriarchal throne.79 The setting and the uses of such portraits are obscure, however, while the icon of Eutychios on the templon beam places him squarely in the cult of the Apostles. Thus there were two thrusts to Eutychios’ artistic initiative. On the one hand he was carrying out a program pushed forward by Justinian on a governmental level to suppress polytheistic worship by destroying polytheist places of cult and their trappings—books, images, chapels. This can be documented from Constantinople to Antioch. On the other hand Eutychios was constructing a carefully designed iconographic program of powerful conviction for the Orthodox Cathedral, which when installed in Saint Sophia was received with great enthusiasm all across Christendom. The insertion of icons into the chancel barrier in the mid sixth century was a decisive step in the progress of icon cult in which the celebration of the Sacrament was surrounded by an extended set of images. The Apostles and Evangelists would remain in the very same place throughout the Middle Ages down to Anton Rublev’s icon screen in the Assumption Cathedral, Moscow, in the fifteenth century.

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CHAPTER SEVEN TEMPLON AND SANCTUARY IMAGES IN EGYPT AND THE DECREE OF THE COUNCIL OF NICAEA II PRESCRIBING ICON CULT AD 787

The Constantinople templon icons at Saint Sophia and Saint Polyeuktos had counterparts in Egypt, but because the Egyptian pieces are scattered in different collections, and because they lack an interpreter of the stature of Paul the Silentiary, their collective importance has gone largely un-recognized. Elizabeth S. Bolman has addressed this problem in two directions. First, addressing specifically the question of figural decoration on the chancel barriers of the early Coptic church, Bolman has carefully surveyed the archaeological evidence of the plan and disposition of the barriers that separated the areas of the clergy from the laity and she has assembled a handful of icons that give evidence of belonging to such barriers.1 Then in another direction, with spectacular results, Bolman undertook the cleaning and restoration and now the study and publication of the largest intact sanctuary of Christian Egypt, the splendid Anba Bishai church of the Red Monastery near Sohag.2 Taken together, these studies have given a radical new shape to Coptic art. In her modest earlier study Bolman discussed how Coptic sanctuary plans resemble and differ from those of the early Byzantine churches. 3 What is most surprising is the abundance of evidence of wooden barriers or screens, to which images are associated. In the Coptic tradition these screens are referred to as the “Veils of the Temple.” Especially significant are the remains of the the Kellis East Church in the Dahleh Oasis, dated to the late Constantinian period, in which pieces of a screen of wood have been found with fragments of figures executed in glass, as yet un-identified.4 Bolman also reported wood framed screens as much as two meters high as well as constructions with colonnettes supporting an architrave, resembling the Byzantine templon. She singled out four individual icons, to which we would add four more, including the Louvre Fortuna Anthousa, already introduced here. The sanctuary employment of icons seems to have overridden the doctrinal fracture of Christendom consequent upon the Council of Chalcedon (431). The division was emotionally turbulent and intellectually very troublesome, but the evidence suggests that icons belonged to an earlier, more basic level of Christian cultic observance that was shared all around the Mediterranean, even as far as Monophysite Armenia in the mountains 194

of the Caucasus. Icon veneration antedated the name-calling of the Monophysite controversy and was regarded on both sides as an integral part of their Christian religious observance. The early Christian icon experience worked as a strong unifying principle in the face of Christian rifts and, eventually, in the face of Moslem an-iconism. The Egyptian material expands the iconography seen in the templon icons of the capital. In one remarkable case, namely the Louvre Annunciation (Paris 10878-9), it clearly anticipates Constantinople, with the earliest instance of a narrative icon on the templon barrier. In fact, the proposed fifth century date for the Louvre Annunciation makes it simply the earliest surviving icon, in our strict understanding of that term as Christian cultic wood panel-painting. The Egyptian panels constitute a tightlyknit group, and they might be said to supply a context for one another in their shared construction and iconography. Though the evidence is limited, it begins to raise the question of whether and how the Patriarchates of Alexandria and Constantinople diverged, in icon use and in iconography. In this group only the Louvre Fortuna Anthousa has an archaeological provenance, and it and the Benaki icon of Christ offer important inscriptional evidence. The Soldier Saint fragment in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (1987.440.6) is typical of three icons done in relief, for all of which Bolman proposes a provenance from Bawit. (Chapter Seven, Figure 1, Soldier Saint, MMA 1987.440.6) Measuring 30.0 cm high, the New York piece shows the full figure of a haloed saint, between a pair of miniature trees symbolizing Paradise, a long-lasting feature of Coptic templon iconography, identifying the sanctuary as Paradise.5 The saint’s head and halo overlap the carved frame. The choice of relief for templon icons is perfectly understandable: in Constantinople we have seen relief was chosen for templon icons in both marble and in silver. Painted relief in wood must have been more expensive than simple panel-painting and its visual impact was more forceful in the spacious interiors of fifth and sixth century churches. Within the frame on either side of the saint’s halo a little rectangular cartouche was provided for his name, and the same we will see on the piece in Munich. The fourth century Exodus pain195

Soldier Saint from the Fayum, ca. 500 AD [height 30.0 cm.]. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, no. 1987.440.6. [Museum photo.] The Blessing Christ, sixth century, 14.5 x 36 cm., Athens, Benaki Museum no. 8953.[Museum photo.]

Annunciation to the Virgin, ﬁfth century AD [28.5 x 14.2 x 2 cm.]. Paris, Musée du Louvre E 17118 [Museum photo.]

ting, newly acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art offers another example of such cartouche labels, but with a narrative subject is offered by the newly acquired Exodus Painting of the Metropolita Museum of Art (formerly in the Trier Sammlung des Archäologischen Instituts der Universität OL 1986.11a).6 While the inscriptions themselves have been lost on the New York and Munich icons it is significant that Christians needed to have their saints named in order to secure their identity. The gods and goddesses are never labeled on the paintings under study. The military saints often came in pairs, whose iconography was not markedly distinguished—George and Demetrius, Sergius and Bacchus, the two Theodores. The New York panel has a dark blue painted background and there are traces of color too on the saint’s clothing, a purple military mantle, which hangs longer than his tan tunic. His tunic is double, short-sleeves over long-sleeves, for nights are cold in the desert. He stares at the viewer with fixed frontal gaze from eyes which were sculpted and painted (but the reverse of natural colors, for the iris was white with a black dot for the pupil). A simple U-line defines a nose which is as wide as the mouth, the whole expression being rather dour. His short haircut, tied with a fillet, follows the fashion of Theodosius’ military guard on the obelisque base in Constantinople (390). He raises his arms in the customary Christian prayer gesture. The faithful imagined the saint to be praying with them as they offered prayers before the templon. The original edges of the frame of the Soldier Saint panel can be verified on three sides: the right edge is plain, but at the top and bottom the frame has a champfered edge (a rabbet tongue, back lap), the most likely explanation for which is its fitting into grooved horizontal members, which Bolman interprets as a templon beam. This can be contrasted with the use of panels in door construction, of which many examples survive.7 Panels fitted for doors are true structural members of the doors in that their rigidity prevents the door from sagging. They are therefore fitted snug on the sides and their corners are usually mitred. The Soldier Saint was not structurally engaged with panels on either side but only with the supporting members above and below. The chamfered fitting should be compared with the dowel fastening of two icons in the Cabinet des Médailles (considered below). The Equestrian Saint relief in Munich, missing its lower third, must have been of very similar dimensions when complete, and it shares many stylistic details with the New York panel, including the cartouche for a lost label in exactly the same space between the halo and the upper left corner of the frame.8 (Omit Chapter Seven, Figure 2, seen earlier in Chapter One, Figure 10)As in the New York icon, the upper edge preserves a rabbet tongue (but now front lap) for fitting in a horizontal grooved member, while the left side edge was finished plain. Again the background was painted a deep blue, though other colors are lost. While the carving looks similar, the Munich figure is more

deeply undercut than the New York example, leaving the figure almost free of the ground in some places. The artist wanted to emphasize the palpable reality of the figure. One may also observe that the worn facial features are also very similar to the New York Soldier Saint, and again the head and halo overlap the border. This is a cavalry officer with his mantle flying out to the left over the rump of his horse. The officer sits astride his mount but, instead of watching where he is going he turns sharply to look full face at the viewer. The saint’s gesture, as well as the entire composition, is remarkably close to that of the Caravan Guardian (Cairo 31570). Rondot mistook his mount for a dromedary and identified the rider as a victorious Harpocrates as in a terracotta from the Fayum (Louvre CA 654).9 The Christian saint has inherited from the old caravan god the same mission of protecting merchants crossing the dangerous desert, but his gesture seems to be the orans gesture of the New York icon.10 This group of templon paintings includes a third example of a 196

painted relief, the Annunciation to the Virgin, Louvre E17118, which is now well known from Marie-Hélène Rutschowsaya’s fundamental scholarship.11 (Chapter Seven, Figure 3, Annunciation to the Virgin, fifth century AD, Louvre E 17118) Unaccountably, both on the cover of the Louvre catalogue of 1986 and in the Athens exhibition catalogue of Mother of God, p. 271, the excellent color photograph of the Annunciation is printed in reverse, which negates her place at the left at the beginning of a narrative set. Bolman’s study has demonstrated its exceptional importance for the history of art. The top and bottom edges are chamfered for fitting in the frame of a templon, as were the two previous relief icons, but the left edge is not so chamfered but has a simple un-painted border. This would mean that the painting stood first on the left in a row of images in the templon, which became the standard position for the Annunciation when the narrative set of the Life of Christ was developed for the Middle Byzantine templon barriers. This is an historic first. Mary was to hold this position in the so-called Festival Set of icons for a thousand years. As the earliest icon of a narrative subject from a templon screen, this becomes a key monument in the dawn of Christian art. The execution has many similarities to the preceding two examples in its painted relief technique. Its height of 28.5 cm is very close to that of the New York Military Saint. Instead of blue, the background is black, heightening the relief effect. Black paint is used as well for the iris of her eyes within a circle of white (correcting the “mistake” of the New York panel). In Mary’s garments strokes of pink and purple have survived. She sits on a stool, better suited to her task of weaving than the throne she uses in sixth century representations of the subject, which

place her basket of weaving on the floor. That Mary was weaving a curtain for the temple when the Angel Gabriel arrived is mentioned by the Protoevangelium of James 11: 1-3 (of probable Egyptian second century origin) and Bolman noticed that Cyril of Alexandria (died 444) interpreted the thread the Virgin was spinning as referring to the Incarnation of Christ De Adoratione, 9 (PG 68, 633D-36A). Since Bolman also points out that the Coptic tradition refers metaphorically to the chancel screen itself as the Veil of the Temple, the location of the Louvre icon on a chancel barrier becomes all the more compelling. The Lord’s instructions to Moses were very explicit about the Veil of the Temple: “You shall make a veil of blue and purple and scarlet stuff and fine twined linen; in skilled work shall it be made, with Cherubim” (Ex. 26:31). It is to this passage in particular that Vrt an s K ertoł (contemporary with the Red Monastery, below) directs his reader to explain the Cherubim in his defense of images.12 In summary, we have a remarkable coincidence: we are dealing with a icon of Mary weaving an icon of the Cherubim, a subject on which we have the comments of an author, who like the majority of Egyptian Christians, was Monophysite. We will return to Monophysitism and Vrt an s K ertoł below. Rather than attending to her work or to her angelic visitor, whose right leg survives in the lower right corner, she turns sharply to make eye contact with the viewer as if emphasizing the implications of this special moment. In this she resembles the Munich Rider Saint who pays no attention to where his mount is taking him. Mary’s pensive face is a little more delicate and sensitive than the soldier’s and the large, widely-spaced eyes resemble textile renditions. Her awkward pose too, with elbows and knees at uncomfortable angles, may be due to copying from textile 197

Archangel, sixth century [23 x 14 x 1.4 cm.]. Paris, Cabinet des Médailles, Bibliothèque Nationale Fr.1129 [Museum photo.]

St Mark.sixth century 32.5 x 15.5 cm.. Paris, Cabinet des Médailles, Bibliothèque Nationale Fr.1129a [Museum photo.]

nich panels as well. Rutschowskaya’s early date is well supported. In the 6th century the artists put the Virgin on a throne not a stool, and her weaving becomes far less prominent, the basket being placed on the floor.14 In addition, the early date may be related to its source in Egyptian textiles, in which one finds the same thoughtful face of the Virgin with widely spaced eyes in the fourth century, as well as the unusual figure drawing—all knees and elbows.15 If our agreement with Bolman about the templon mounting is allowed, narrative subjects were evidently being admitted to the chancel screen far earlier than has been generally supposed. Rutschowscaya suggests the employment of the Annunciation on a sanctuary door panel, because indeed the subject occurs commonly on sanctuary doors in Middle and Late Byzantine art. But it does not occur in early Egyptian doors, which, as remarked above, are fitted quite differently. The Louvre Fortuna Anthousa—without relief—has precise archaeological context in Edfu, which we have reviewed earlier, as well as its Greek and Aramaic inscriptions. On the templon screen Fortuna has effectively become a saint through Christian usage. With these pieces Bolman includes a fragment of an icon of Christ in the Benaki Museum, no. 8953, which carries precious bilingual inscriptional evidence.16 (Chapter Seven, Figure 4. Christ,sixth century, 14.5 x 36 x 1.4 cm. Atheens, Benaki 8953.) Painted in Greek uncials, squeezed in between the halo and the red border, one reads on the left, “Emmanouel God with us.” (Mt. 1:23), which is Matthew’s citation of Isaiah’s prophecy of Christ’s birth from a virgin (Is. 7:14). As in the Edfu inscription, Greek was the language of the liturgy, and the words are taken from the text of the Gospel as read in the Mass. This Isaiah prophecy, we will see, also plays a prominent role in the iconography of the Red Monastery. To the right of the halo the inscription in the same hand is in smaller letters in Coptic. The dialect is Fayumic, which localizes the icon.17 This is the spoken language of the dedicant, and of the community of monks whom he addresses. Bagnall points out that bilingualism was common in Christian monastic communities, which produced bilingual lectionaries until the tenth century; Monophytism did not imply a hostility to Greek as a language.18 The inscription gives us another rare identification of a dedicant, and he is titled “apa,” the spiritual father or abbot of the community. As usual in votive offerings, the dedicant wanted his name recorded, and he puts this in the nominative, implying the verb of offering. Then he addresses his request to the monks asking for their prayers: “Apa Timotheos [has offered this icon]. Remember him that God ‘may bring me out [of Sheol]. (Ps. 30:3)’”19 The petition is addressed to the congregation of monks praying in the church and it alludes to Psalm 30:3 where David thanks god for his deliverance from hell. It is this echo of the familiar psalm that changes the pronoun from third person to first person. It is ungrammatical but it made sense to the Apa. Monophysites and

models at this early stage in the formation of the iconography.13 These three pieces clearly belong closely together in the early Byzantine period. Bolman suggests dating the group around 500 AD; Rutschowskaya, however, reviewing the occurrences of the Annunciation in early Egyptian art and studying the extensive Louvre collection of comparable wooden pieces from Egypt, puts the Annunciation panel in the late 5th century, which raises the question of a 5th century dating for the similar NY and Mu198

Chalcedonians equally professed faith in the miraculous virgin origin of Christ. Timotheos wanted to inscribe his profession of faith where Christ would not miss it, right alongside Christ’s ear, as words spoken to him, like the inscriptions alongside the ear of Heron on the Etampes and Providence panels. The image was listening. The fitting along the top edge for dowels angled in at 45% is rather different from the rabbet fitting of the four preceding icons. It must have attached it to some sort of horizontal beam, since dowels are fittings for attaching wood to wood. The horizontal breaking of the icon means the grain runs horizontally. It is only on templon beams that horizontal planks are used for icons. From the Cabinet des Médailles, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, two more examples can be added to this collection of likely templon icons and they too are from the Fayum.(Chapter Seven, Figure 5. Archangel, sixth century, 23 x 14 x 1.4, Paris, Cabinet des Médailles, B.N.Fr; 1129a.) They are distinguished by being the first two icons to be accessioned by a public collection in France. Found in Crocodilopolis in the Fayum, they reached Paris in 1925 from the collection of W. Froehner.20 The Archangel Fr 1129 (23 x 14 x 1.4 cm.) exhibits a shadow-less style with painted lines of varying weights, from the heavy contours of his halo and mantle to the delicate lines of his facial features, the pearl-decorated tablion on his mantle, and the fluttering ribbons of the fillet in his curly hair. With his right hand the angel makes a blessing gesture and with his left he seems to be carrying something like a Gospel book over his heart, as if he has become an Apostle/Evangelist. At the top center of the yellow-painted frame is a round hole for attachment by a dowel to a support behind the icon, and in the bottom center is a rather larger rectangular hole which must have been for a lamp fixture hanging in front of it. This is exactly the position of the lamp fixtures on the marble icons of St Polyeuktos in Constantinople. The St Mark in the same collection, is likewise from Crocodilopolis in the Fayum, no. 1129a.21 (Chapter Seven, Figure 6. St. Mark. sixth century, 32.5 x 15.5 x Paris, Cabinet des Médailles, BN FR. 1129a) It carries a Coptic inscription reading, “Our Father Mark the Evangelist,” which is written above his head and pours down into his left ear, like the inscriptions on the preceding panel. His narrow omophorion, decorated with delicate crosses, encircles his neck and falls down on either side of his chest, resembling the omophoria worn by the Apostles of St Polyeuktos. With two hands under his mantle he clasps the Gospel to his chest the way Apostle A does at St Polyeuktos. In style the painting is very similar to the Archangel, though the halo is missing. In Berlin Otto Rubensohn was responsible for the purchase in 1905 of the icon of Apa Abrahan of Hermonthis, identified by inscription entered right and left of the saint’s halo. (Chapter Seven, Figure 7. Apa Abraham. AD 590-600 Berlin, Museum für Spätantike 6114.) This fixes its date AD 590-600. One may

read the inscription as a simple identification label, or, preferably, one may read it like the Apa Timotheus’ inscription as a dedicant’s inscription, “Apa Abraham [has offered this],” in which we find the unusual situation of an abbot dedicating a portrait of himself which he has commissioned. In a style close to that of St Mark and the Archangel, the delicate lines of the eyes and frowning mouth contrast with the weighty black contours of the head and halo. The abbot-bishop with omophorion holds 199

Apa Abraham, 590-600 AD. 36.5 x 26.5 cm. Berlin, Museum für Spätantike und byzantinische Kunst, no. 6114 [Museum photo.]

the Gospel over his heart with his right hand like Apostle B of St Polyeuktos, as he would hold the Gospel in the Great Entrance of the Divine Liturgy. The lower quarter of the icon is heavily worn from touching and the holes in the four corners were meant for dowels to attach the icon to a wood support behind the icon. These eight icons form a fairly coherent group with connections to their counterparts in Constantinople. They are all of the same vertical format, with similar painted frames, usually red, and all are virtually the same size. Inscriptions are all entered in the same location, within easy listening distance, one might say, of the saint. One pronounced the saint’s name when praying to him. All eight of these Egyptian icons were very likely affixed to templon structures like the templon icons of Constantinople. Assembled before the brethren attending the Eucharistic liturgy, the icons made a forceful impression. Templon icons embraced the population on all economic levels from Justinian’s elegant silver reliefs in the cathedral of Saint Sophia to an immigrant Palestinian community’s paintings on re-used wooden boards in Edfu. At the same time the templon icons embraced both sides of the profound ChalcedonianMonophysite schism. The Edfu icon is certifiably Chalcedonian by inscription. However the other panels, whether or not from Bawit, as suggested by the excavation history of Bawit, probably belonged to the majority population of Egypt who were Monophysite. The Monophysites were involved in image use in many different situations in home and in church, including icons with lamps attached, two sided icons for processional use, and icons for book covers, representative examples of all of which have survived from the sixth century. A wide range of the sanctoral pantheon are represented in this templon group, from Christ and his Mother, Angels, Prophets, and Apostles as well as holy abbots and bishops. Templon icons demonstrate endorsement by the ecclesiastical structure. Art historians would like to have written documents, episcopal pronouncements, or conciliar decrees establishing what should be done in placing icons in church, but in the fifth and sixth century it did not happen that way. Instead of a decree we have the precedent established by the Patriarch Eutychios, who was systematizing icons on the chancel screen in his Cathedral in Constantinople, and this must have carried a good deal of weight. Placed around the altar of the Holy Eucharist, icons attained their most sublime use and their most convincing theological justification. The comparison of icons to the Eucharist is the most consistent argument in the treatises in defence of icon veneration. The Newly-Discovered Red Monastery While theologians were inevitably drawn into the acrimonious competition of the great sees of Christendom, punctuated by ecumenical and ever more divisive councils, the artists seem to have expressed an older and more primitive unity of vision that underlay the ethnic and sectarian differences. One might even 200

propose that the most remarkable feature of Christian art in the early period is the coherence of the art-experience. The most important new-found masterpiece of Early Christian art is the brilliant painted sanctuary of the Red Monastery. (Chapter Seven, Figure 8, The Red Monastery, Deir Anba Bisshai. Isometric drawing of the sanctuary by E. Bolman and P. Grossman.) Rescued from centuries of grime by Bolman’s ten-year project of cleaning and restoration (administered by the American Research Center in Egypt and funded by the United States Agency for International Development), the unveiling of this new discovery was the highlight of the grand exhibition “Byzantium and Islam” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (2012).22 The great church of Anba Bishai, the Red Monastery of Sohag on the upper Nile, contains a storehouse of information that it will take a generation of scholars to unpack and it will radically re-shape the history of Early Christian art. Bolman, who had earlier supervised the cleaning of the 13th century wall paintings in the Monastery of St. Anthony with the support of ARCE,23 brought the same conservation staff under the direction of Luigi De Cesaris to the much larger and more demanding site of Anba Bishai. The eastern, sanctuary portion of the basilica is an architectural masterpiece of a complex trefoil design of the late fifth century containing three storeys of niches and vaults. After the collapse of the nave roofing in the fourteenth century, this sanctuary unit survived intact, used as a self-suffcient church. When the candle and incense tar were removed by Bolman’s team, an almost complete painting program was revealed covering all the surfaces.24 The conservators have carefully distinguished four periods in the painting, which Bolman dates by archaeological comparanda and epigraphy to the sixth to eighth century. Many of the single-saint icons in the niches are sixth century, while the great visionary compositions of the vaults above are seventh or eighth century. Unfortunately the patronage of this undertaking is still to be discovered. The painting is of the highest quality and its program is very carefully contrived. While the basilicas of Rome and Ravenna may boast larger programs, they might be described as programs of an additive nature, such as the succession of biblical scenes as in Sta Maria Maggiore, Rome, or succession of individual saints as in S. Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna. The Red Monastery offers a complex unified program, the largest surviving from any Christian church in the first millennium. The subtleties of this program will challenge historians for some time to come but already the large organizing principles are recognizable. The decoration has a grand logic, with grand, multi-figure compositions above and single-figure icons in lower ranges. The decoration of the Anba Bishai sanctuary presents us with a startling painted world. The architecture itself consists of a trefoil arrangement of three apsed spaces, the walls of which are activated with two stories of niches framed with applied archi201

tecture. The real niches of the first two stories are continued into trompe-l’oeil painted niches in the zone of the apses, with close parallels in Rome, Ravenna, and Jerusalem. This painted vocabulary of columns and capitals, stepped merlons, joggled voussoirs, book-make marble panelling, all reproduce in the humbler painted medium the effects which the cosmopolitan Alexandrian style achieved in expensive marble and mosaic in the great urban centers. The figural program, moreover, manifests remarkable similarities to the sanctuary program that we have reconstructed in Constantinople. We might almost say that the Red Monastery turns the Saint Sophia program outside-in. Whereas in Saint Sophia the icons on the templon faced outward to the congregation, who gathered around it on three sides, in the Red Monastery, the images are turned in toward the trefoil sanctuary unit under the dome (originally a timber roof). The congregation of Anba Bishai was removed to the three-naved basilica to the west, which communicated with the sanctuary through a great 14-meter-high arch. Who among the large monastic community were privileged to pass through the arch to attend the services within this sanctuary is a difficult historical problem for the liturgists and it has become a difficult contemporary problem in the conservation of the monument, since the terms of the ARCE

support of the restoration specified returning the monument to its original functioning, as far as that can be established. This would have theoretically excluded most non-Copts and absolutely all women.25 The Saint Sophia program therefore had a greater “legibility,” in conveying its principle message to the laity in the nave, for the chief subject on the west face of the templon was the gathering of the Apostles around Christ, signifying the (ideal) unity of the universal church, as gathered in the Ecumenical Councils. In Constantinople the threefold iconography of the sanctuary screen explained and advertised what the clergy were enacting liturgically behind the templon barrier. The imagery addressed the laity, explaining the mystery celebrated by the priests, in rites which the laity could glimpse between the columns. At the Red Monastery, which was not a cathedral nor a parish church but the church of a fast-growing organization of monks, the program addresses the monastic clergy. It faces, surrounds, and contains the mystery of the altar. The program creates the space of the Holy of Holies and only those deemed worthy to approach the altar are privileged to see the unfolding of the mystery that is revealed in the trans-temporal visions, which encompass the altar like a dome above it. The images constitute the heavenly environment of the altar. 202

The Red Monastery, Deir Anba Bishai. Isometric drawing of the sanctuary by E.Bolman and P. Grossmann [Photo. Bolman]

The Red Monastery, Deir Anba Bishai. General view of the north lobe. [Photo. Bolman]

(Chapter Seven, Figure 9,The Red Monastery, Deir Anba Bishai. General view of the north lobe. [Photo. Bolman] The Isaiah Vision of the Nursing Virgin. North lobe detail, Red Monastery, Deir Anba Bishai [Photo. Bolman] Painted icons in niches. Saints Besa, Shenoute, and Bishay,North lobe, middle register, Red Monastery, Deir Anba Bishai. [Photo. Bolman]

7 Figure 12, Tapestry Icon of the Virgin, Cleveland Museum of Art, 179 x 110 cm. Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Bequest.) The three multi-figured vision compositions of the Red Monastery are framed in painted Classical architecture that carries to a clever conclusion the multiplied niches of the real architecture of the lower stories. The numbers change from four bays below to three in the apse zone. The irrationality of this sequence is analogous to architect Anthemius’ Saint Sophia, where he placed seven arches on top of five in the nave and six on top of three in the apses. Procopius remarked on the mis-match, admiring the architect’s daring in placing gallery columns over voids below. As in Constantinople, three manifestations, or epiphanies of Christ were chosen at the Red Monastery. But whereas at Saint Sophia and St Polyeuktos the central portal of the templon was designed to carry what we are calling the “Ecclesiastical” Christ, which illustrates Christ on earth, governing the Church through his Apostles with the great Ezekiel and Isaiah visions on either side, the Red Monastery assigns the place of honor in the east lobe to the Vision of Christ among the Cherubim.27 This is exactly what we one should have expected from its prominence in the monasteries of Bawit and Saqqara. Then, to the right, one finds the vision of the Ecclesiastical Christ Enthroned among his Evangelists, while to the left, one finds the Isaiah Vision, namely the Virgin Nursing the Christ Child. Below the prophetic visions one finds the single “faux” icons of individual saints at the Red Monastery. At Saint Sophia the individual saints (and angels and prophets) were presented in oval frames within the architrave of the templon. At St Polyeuktos, judging from the remains surviving, the individual Apostles were located on top of the architrave where they had separate

The Red Monastery program is highly literate, teaming with inscriptions, which Bolman will present in all their complexity, with the help of Copticologist Paul Dilley. While we await Bolman’s definitive exposition, we will restrict our examination to the best preserved lobe, the Isaiah vision, showing the Virgin Nursing the Child. We may let this lobe stand for the system of all three. The uniting of three epiphanies of Christ in one grand painted space is unparalleled, but the conceptual challenge was already understood in the niche paintings of Bawit. Though the scale is nowhere near as great, the Bawit niches attempt a complex integration of more than one vision of Christ, such as niches 6, 17, 20, and 89. The need was felt to find a unity, a single inclusive statement, and the separate epiphanies were synthesized by nesting one within the other or placing them one above the other: the Ezekiel Vision with the fluttering Cherubim, the Isaiah Vision of the Virgin on the Throne of David, and the Apostolic Vision of Christ governing the Church through the Apostles. One of the most successful synthetic statements of this sort is achieved in the Coptic textile in Cleveland, which puts the Isaiah and Ezekiel Visions on top of one another within a rich encircling floral garland border containing the busts of the Apostles.26 (Chapter 203

The Isaiah Vision of the Nursing Virgin. Red Monastery, Deir Anba Bishai [Photo. Bolman]

individual frames making them into separate little shrines, with lamps dangling before them. Conceptually, these little shrines may be compared to the niche shrines painted for the individual saints in the lower registers of the Red Monastery. On the first and on the middle register each niche contains a separate rectangular icon—full length figures on the first register and half figures on the middle register. Their frames are triple, bright red with white and black borders inside, making them resemble panel-paintings of wood placed within the niches. In other words they are fully part of the overall trompe-l’oeil aesthetic of the Red Monastery. In the Orthodox Baptistery of Ravenna (around 458), rectangular frames were provided for figures of eight standing Apostles or Prophets in low relief in niches. In the houses of the Fayum we noticed pre-Christian evidence of framed panel-paintings placed in niches for veneration (e.g. the Kor of Ann Arbor 28807), and two other of the panels in our corpus have frames painted on them to make them into selfsufficient shrines (London 1981, 4-23.1, and Moscow 6860). The logic of this frame-in-niche element at the Red Monastery 204

makes it very likely that the niches were designed from the start to hold “icons” of saints. These individual “faux” icons in the Red Monastery belong with other surviving wood-panel icons from Egypt, with which they constitute a fairly close-knit family, some of them strongly resembling counterparts from the templon of St Polyeuktos. Greek or Egyptian, they appear as members of the same family artistically. Apa Abraham of Hermonthis, for example, was presented as a half figure within a red painted frame. His facial features are drawn with fine lines encircled by the much heavier outlines of head and halo, as characteristic of the drawing in the Karanis contour style.28 Like Apostle B of St Polyeuktos, Aba Abraham clasps the Gospel over his heart with his right hand (the books of both are decorated with jewels), and he wears the bishop’s omophorion over his shoulders, as do the Apostles of St Polyeuktos. Like them he also has prominent staring eyes and exceptionally large ears (features of the pre-Christian gods of the Fayum), to hear the prayers of suppliants approaching the templon. By the same token one might compare the St Mark in 205

Painted icons in niches. Red Monastery, Deir Anba Bishai. [Photo Bolman]

Paris to Apostle A of St Polyeuktos. Again the saints wear the bishop’s omophorion, but now they conceal their hands beneath the mantle while they clutch the Gospel to their chest.29 The saints of the Red Monastery are especially the founders and legislators of Egyptian monasticism, for example St Besa, St Shenoute, and the founder of the Red Monastery, St Bishay, in the north lobe. With long beards and mouth firmly closed they stare straight ahead. This half-figure icon type was destined to become the standard for single-saint icons in Egypt and Byzantium (it is unclear which led the development). It is not a bust image but a half-length figure to allow the saint to hold a book or cross attribute. Prophetic Visions The highest zone of the Red Monastery sanctuary was reserved for the prophetic visions.30 Visions have a very different reality status from ordinary portraits or history paintings. Because events in the life of Christ correspond to passages in the Gospels, they are commonly handled simply as “history paintings” of sacred subjects. But the fact that many of the Gospel events were predicted by prophets lends them a pre-existence. To start with Ezekiel, in the sixth century BC on the banks of the River Chobar (an off-shoot of the Euphrates above Babylon) Ezekiel was shown a vision of “the likeness as it were of a human form” (Ex. 1:26) seated on a throne of sapphire. In these verses the Christian reading of Scripture discovered that the Incarnation had been revealed to the prophet long before the birth of Christ in the reign of Augustus. Because this was written into Sacred Scripture it was immutable. The description in Sacred Scripture was already an icon in words. The paintings of the subject in Bawit and Saqqara identify the theme of Ezekiel’s vision by including the “Four Living Creatures,” the Cherubim who guarded God’s throne (Ez; 25: 10-22; Kg. 6:23-28). This image, therefore, is meant to show not Jesus the Galilean of history, but the Christ that pre-existed his birth, the Divine Logos of John 1:1. This is the Christ who existed from all eternity, though it also shows what he looks like now and forever (in eternity one cannot properly speak of past, present, and future). In the early Christian belief system the production of an icon could precede, follow, or be contemporary with the person or event it depicted. This head-spinning timelessness puts prophetic visions into a special class of images. Or, to cite another vision, in the north lobe at the Red Monastery we find the Virgin Nursing her Child as the realization of the Vision of Isaiah. There are fourteen figures in the grand composition, filling the five-meter span of the north lobe, and the prophet himself stands to the right and gestures to the enthroned Virgin while unfurling his prediction on a scroll (Is. 7:14-15). In the eighth century BC Isaiah had written down the vision in which the Lord predicted to King Ahaz, by the Pool of Siloam in Jerusalem, that “the Lord himself will give you a 206

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Tapestry Icon of the Virgin, Cleveland Museum of Art, sixth century, 179 x 110 cm, Bequest Leonard C. Hanna Jr.

sign. Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel,” (Is. 7:14; Mt. 2:23) and “of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, upon the throne of David and over his kingdom.” (Is. 9,7). Some modern translators (including the New Oxford Annotated Bible of the R.S.V.) make the “virgin” into just “a young woman,” but this wipes out the “sign” value of her pregnancy; it is generally not a miracle or sign that young women become pregnant. God had given Ezekiel “a sign” and starting with Matthew, Christians took the word to refer to a “virgin’s,” conception, so that Isaiah was credited with sighting the Virgin birth from afar and writing it down. Long before Gabriel’s arrival in Nazareth, then, the Incarnation existed in God’s mind, the Greek word for this in John of Damascus (c. 675-749) being “ennoia,” a word that refers to the act of thinking, a cogitation or conception, or the will or intent of a testator.31 As Elsner summarizes the situation, it was in the Iconoclast dispute of the eighth century AD that “images acquired a level of philosophical theorization to which they had never before been subjected, in the entire tradition of Graeco-Roman image making, reaching back to archaic antiquity.”32 Central to this intellectual development was the image theory formulated by John of Damascus (c. 655-c.745). Too little attention is given to the theologian’s career, which is very nicely summarized by Vassa S. Conticello.33 An Arab Christian of the Mansur family, which managed the finances of the caliphate, he left his home city and his father’s employment when al-Walid appropriated the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Damascus to make it a mosque (705). At this point he went to Jerusalem to serve his spiritual father John V (newly appointed Patriarch of Jerusalem after a vacancy of some 67 years). Ordained priest, John of Damascus served for thirty years in the church of the Anastasis where he composed his principal theological works. John of Damascus is well known as a synthesizer of Patristic theology in his Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, but his most original and sophisticated theological contribution is contained in his Defence of Images.34 The Damascene’s image theory starts not with a review of the famous art works of antiquity but with an explanation of the loftiest possible example of an “image” (the Greek word is always “eik n,” or icon). His example is “the Son of God, who is the living, essential, and precisely similar Image of the invisible God . . . equal to Him in all things, except that He is begotten by Him.”35 The part played by prophetic visions is introduced in the very next paragraph of his icon theory: “There are also in God images and models of His acts yet to come; those things which are His will for all eternity, which is always changeless. . . . These images and models were marked out before-hand, for in his will God has prepared all things that are yet to happen, making them unalterable before they come to pass.”36 John is distinguishing three stages in the icon: the first stage is the icon in the mind of God (for example God’s plan of the Virgin 208

birth); second is the prophecy, that is, God’s revelation of this forethought in the text of Scripture (e.g., the passage of Isaiah 7:14); and the final stage is a painting realized by an artist such as the Virgin Nursing in the Red Monastery. This precision was essential to the Damacene’s treatise written in Jerusalem in the 730’s, but it should be noticed and emphasized that this line of reasoning was already developed over a century earlier in an Armenian treatise by Vrt an s K ertoł, Against the Iconoclasts. Vrt an s represents an earlier stage in the development of the icon defence, still close to the tradition of florilegia,37 and he falls short of the abstraction of theory of John of Damascus. However he does in fact enumerate a whole series of prophetic vision-icons that were familiar to him: “God is certainly not the images and the paintings, but rather we paint these in the name of God, just as He made them manifest earlier in words. As Isaiah described the Nativity, and Jeremiah the going forth among the people, and David the Passion and the Burial, and Ezekiel and Hosea the Resurrection, and Daniel and Zachariah the Second Coming, and Nahum and Malachi the Judgement, because they narrated the events to us in symbols. And the icon is as the event was, it is as it shall be, and we paint the same as that which is written in the scriptures.”38 Vrt an s repeats this list of prophetic vision-icons a little later emphasizing their importance in church decoration in Armenia. This element in his theorizing has most special relevance to the great prophetic icons of the Red Monastery first of all because Vrt an s’ treatise (604-07) is contemporary, as far as can be determined, with the painting of the Red Monastery, and secondly because he is the only Monophysite author to deal expressly with the problem of icons. Zibawi observes that the Monophysites are often reproached (by Iconophiles) for being Iconoclasts, while the surviving evidence is quite the opposite.39 The achievement of Monophysite art is only beginning to be appreciated but it includes icons for a great variety of situations. The Red Monastery marks a peak achievement, integral to the Christian art of the early Middle Ages. There is nothing quite so ambitious elsewhere in Coptic art, executed by artists of great versatility. Diagramming the subject within a classical architectural framework, the artist offers a sort of theatrical setting, dividing each of the three lobes into a triple arch setting, which provides niche-like spaces for the figures of different scale. The variety of scale very cleverly affords breathing space around the figures which otherwise might feel crowded. The largest figures approach life size, the Virgin on her throne is close to human scale, about a meter and a half tall (Correction “above human scale, about 1.90 meters tall.”) The figures are graceful, gentle, relaxed, self-controled, and their faces are kindly and even cheerful. They are bright compositions, with no shadows, presenting the mystery of the Incarnation without the Passion and Death. The figures are multiplied without crowding and without repetition, given individuality of dress and pose. All the artist’s efforts 209

are invested in making the mystery as attractive as possible—presenting Moses as a sweet, long-haired youth, Daniel in colourful Oriental patterns, Angels in stunning court dress. These are a population one would like to meet. The rendering of all this rich imagery in the humblest of materials creates a complete and self-contained world where the holy figures and all their dress and accoutrements are convincingly rendered as part of one and the same environment. At the 2012 exhibition in New York the museum goers were overwhelmed by the coloristic brilliance of the jewelled style, but the subtlety of its program emerges only with study. The program is highly literate with an elaborate network of texts, identifying labels, scrolls of Scriptural passages, and prayers, all of which Bolman will be translating, identifying, and explaining, in her forthcoming publication. The contemporary Monophysite contribution of Vert an s K ertoł was part of an international intellectual effort, which has unfortunately been completely neglected in scholarship on icons. The reasons for this neglect are multiple. The fact that Vert an s’ treatise is in Armenian gives Byzantinists an excuse for omitting it, pretending that the dialogue on icons was an exclusively Greek intellectual enterprise. Vert an s’ profession as k ertoł may be another factor explaining his obscurity, for the term meant a grammarian, a versifier, a poet, that is, an academic at a rank below that of vardapet, which designated a scholar qualified by courses and examinations and distinguished as a professor or doctor. This lack of rank may partly explain why Vrt an s’ treatise has had a slender textual tradition and is not referred to in surviving medieval sources. But the man himself had a certain standing and was sent as part of an Armenian diplomatic delegation to Constantinople in 589 dealing with the Chalcedonian problem, and when the see of Dvin fell vacant on the death of the Catholicos Moses (604), Vrt an s was designated locum tenens. A collection of his Letters has survived from this period, concerning disciplinary matters, such as the anti-Chalcedonian profession of faith required from the clergy; it is disappointing however that they introduce no discussion of the theological issues of the Natures of Christ and never mention Iconoclasm.40 The firm anchor of the Vrt an s’ treatise Concerning Iconoclasm is the recognizable language and style of the Armenian hellenophile school of the seventh century in which it is written.41 The Greek rhetorical structures, the divisions of the problem, the Greek terms and definitions, and the fabric of references to other literary works translated from Greek, all this belongs to this very important early phase of Armenian literature. Moreover the precise historical situation addressed by the treatise itself, during the turbulent period following the Byzantine annexation of 590, is described in other sources (John Mayrogometsi and John of Ojun) naming the same leaders of the Iconoclastic sect, Thaddeus and Isaiah, who are named in the treatise. These sources which characterize the peculiar ascetic sect as distinctly anticlerical have been carefully reviewed.42

Byzantine scholarship on Iconoclasm has chosen to turn a blind eye on this chapter of Armenian history while attributing Byzantine Iconoclasm to the failure of the imperial forces to check the success of the Caliphate in Anatolia, which failure some were assigning to icons and to Islam’s radical an-iconism. The fact that the Armenian Iconoclast movement preceded Byzantine Iconoclasm (730) by a century and a half and had a totally different dynamics, not tied to successes and failures of the troops in the field, suggests some re-thinking of the Byzantine development. The evidence that the Byzantine formulation of a theology of images in the years leading up to the Council of Nicaea II depended on the sophisticated Armenian defence of images requires a reexamination the religious ingredients in the controversy. While there is no evidence that John of Damascus knew Armenian, there was an Armenian presence in Jerusalem during his residence there which would have made the Armenian scholarship available to the inquisitive mind of John of Damascus. Besides his borrowing from Vrt an s to explain the prophetic visions, the Damascene seems to have been influenced by his argument on the central role of matter in Christian worship. The treatise of Vert an s is distinguished among writings on icons by its focus on the realia of Christian worship. Der Nersessian has pointed out how reliable is his reporting on the decoration of Armenian churches, including mention of wall paintings, wooden icons, manuscript illumination, and bookcovers of ivory, all of which are confirmed archaeologically in early Armenia. In one extraordinary passage, answering his adversaries criticism of the base nature of icon ingredients, Vert an s actually gives a detailed, reliable list of the artist’s materials for painting panels with egg tempera (see below). This kind of approach certainly lies behind the Damascene’s extraordinary peon of matter as the vehicle of salvation, starting with the Body of Christ. “I do not worship matter; I worship the Creator of matter who became matter; who worked out my salvation through matter.. . . Because of this I salute all remaining matter with reverence, because God has filled it with His grace and power. Through it my salvation has come to me.” His argument encompasses the wood of the cross, the ink of the Gospel book, the gold and silver of liturgical vessels, the Body and Blood of the Eucharist, along with the materials of icons.43 The consequence of this, in John of Damascus as in Vert an s, is immediately applicable to Christian worship, for the veneration of images is parallel to Christian prostrations before illuminated Gospel Books bound in ivory during the liturgy. “When we fall down in veneration before the Gospel or kiss it, we do not venerate the ivory and the pigment, imported from overseas from barbarian lands; but we venerate the word of the Savior which is written upon the parchment. So too the old and the young who ran before the Lord of Glory seated on an ass carrying olive and palm branches praised him and threw themselves down before him: they did not venerate the ass but 210

document.52 Only two authors in recent times have expressly taken up this task of deciphering the definition, or horos, of the Council, Marie-France Auzépy and Johannes Bernhard Uphus, each of whom published their own translations and interpretations of the document.53 Christopher Walter concludes his very useful history of the icon screen with a bold recommendation that the Orthodox Church should abolish icon the screen altogether as an obstacle to participation in the Sacrament.54 I would argue that the definition of Nicaea II is framed in the ancient technical terminology of votive offerings whose history we have been following which requires a rather different translation from that currently used. I am submitting my translation alongside the Greek text below in fig. XXX. Conciliar statements are unlike other religious documents. In speaking of Christian theology in general it is important to distinguish various levels of discourse, of which the most exalted is called “dogma,” that is, “religious truth established by Divine Revelation and defined by the Church.”55 In pre-modern times it was accepted that the task of defining dogma belonged to ecumenical councils representing the entire Church. What they decreed constituted the so-called “deposit” of revealed truth, the credendum, binding on the members of the Church. The word “doctrine,” on the other hand, is a much broader term embracing the authoritative teaching of the Church in matters of both faith and morals. This includes the common opinion of bishops, clergy, and theologians explaining the dogmas and applying them to the lives of the community. Still another rung in the ladder—whether higher or lower depends on one’s perspective--is occupied by speculative “theology,” which seeks to explain dogma and doctrine in intellectual terms derived from systems of philosophy independent of Christian teaching, for example from the categories of Aristotle or the metaphors of Platonic and neo-Platonic philosophy. While such explanations are of particular interest to intellectual historians they are not regarded as in any way binding on the faithful, though they may help in explaining the reasonableness of dogma. Among councils Nicaea II is rather peculiar in that its definition is not properly concerned with a matter of faith, something one is obligated to believe, but with a matter of practice, something one is obliged to do. To cite a modern parallel, in 1965, when the Catholic Church at the Second Vatican Council decreed that the liturgy should be conducted not in Latin but in local modern languages, this did not involve any new development in the dogmas of the Eucharist but simply a change in the practice of celebrating the Sacrament. The first ecumenical councils involved the Incarnation and the Persons of the Trinity, and their decrees revolved around developing a rational terminology for expressing the new concepts of Christian revelation in terms like homoousion (“of the very same nature”) or theotokos (“mother of God”) or en duo physesin asynket s (“in two natures unmixed”) in Nicaea I and Ephesus

Christ, the Son of god who was seated on the ass. Thus it is not because of the colors that one does prostrations before the icons but because of Christ in whose name they were painted.”44 This was precisely the issue put before the Fathers of the Second Council of Nicaea, the issue of cult, and this, we will see, was the way they formulated their answer: the cult of the icon was directed to Christ. That the icons of the Red Monastery were cultic icons can be inferred from their representation of lights and incense being offered to the images as well as from the heavy layers of soot removed by the conservators in Bolman’s project. The Decree of the Council of Nicaea II Prescribing Icon Cult It is no exaggeration to say that the Definition of Nicaea II is the single most important ecclesiastical document on the veneration of icons. 45 Never again did the Christian Church review in general council the position it had arrived at on October 13,787. In the sixteenth century, after Zwingli and Calvin ruptured the Christian consensus on images (and many other issues) carrying with them a wide segment of Protestant opinion, the Orthodox and Catholic communions still continued to profess allegiance to the Nicaean position. The Stoglav Council of Moscow, 1551, and the Council of Trent, 1563, presupposed and even repeated the decree of Nicaea II on icons.46 Nicea II is not an easy document to understand. The practices of piety to which it refers, rooted in ancient preChristian usages, are quite foreign to a modern mentality, and the iconoclast Council of Hieria (754) elicits more sympathy among scholars of a post-Reformation era than Nicaea II. Stephen Gero, for example, regarded Nicaea II “as a momentous failure of nerve in Byzantine Christianity . . . an unsuccessful attempt at a reformation.”47 Herman Hennepkof blamed the iconophiles for the intellectual darkness of the seventh and eighth centuries and accordingly in his collection of sources on Iconoclasm he includes the definition, horos, of the Council of 754 but excludes that of Nicaea II.48 Mango’s collection of sources follows the same pattern, including the definitions of the Council of Hieria and of its sequel in 815 but excluding the definition of Nicaea II.49 The result is that the formal Definition of the Council is one of the least studied documents of Iconoclasm. Jaroslav Pelikan, in his masterful history of Chrisitan doctrine, chooses to cast his survey of the icon debate in a trans-historical fashion, putting all the theologians on stage at the same time together, yet he never cites the Definition of the Council, as if the terms in which the Fathers thought they had resolved the issue had no effect on the outcome.50 John Meyendorff, too, passes over Nicaea II to examine instead the ninth century intellectual development in Theodore the Studite and Nikephoros the Patriarch. He cites the Definition of Nicaea II only for its distinction between proskynesis and latreia.51 While Belting includes the Definition of Nicaea II in his appendix of sources he never analyzes the 211

and Chalcedon. The new terms seemed to settle the thorny issues. By contrast, the decree of Nicaea II is primarily concerned with what one should do with icons and with the gestures that should accompany one’s cult and only indirectly with what one ought to believe concerning them. The Council does not offer a new and definitive theory of icons. It is not a formula or set of terms. Rather it is a set of directions on how to use icons, how to worship, how to pray, how to contact the spiritual through the material. The decree is decidedly not a thesis in epistemology, as much as this might interest contemporary philosophers, but a more pragmatic matter concerning the offering of icons, the bowing down before them, the touching and kissing of them, the placing of candles and incense before them. Because worship by gestures is somewhat alien to a post-Reformation Europe, modern scholarship has simply by-passed the Definition itself to focus on the intellectual debates that swirled around it. But the Fathers of the Council of 787 chose to deal with the practices of worship. Nicaea II is also unusual in the wealth of documentation available in its Acta, concerning the debates that preceded the decrees, and this embarrassment of riches confuses the modern investigator. But students of canon law recognize the fundamental distinction between discussions and decrees: only the matter that enters into the horos is what the Council actually decided and legislated. The Miracle 15 story in the Acta is a very instructive example of what I mean. A woman who was cured of some illness by the intercession of the physician saints, Cosmas and Damian, had an image of them painted on the wall of her home as a votive or thank offering.56 This I am calling the primary gesture of icon cult, offering to the saints an icon of themselves. Subsequently, however, the woman suffered another health problem with an attack of colic. Thereupon the woman scraped some of the plaster and pigment from the painting, mixed it with water and consumed this concoction to her immediate relief. This I refer to as a secondary cultic gesture and it is recounted in the Acta because the miracle was thought to validate her primary gesture of putting up an icon.57 Whatever the Fathers may have thought of ingesting pigments, when they finally drafted the horos they did not prescribe the practice. What the Council prescribed was the primary gesture of the woman’s cult, namely the offering of the icon to the saints, and this is confirmed in the technical language of the decree. One might say something similar of the many theological positions that are discussed in the Acta, which range from the second century Acts of John, to Basil of Caesarea, Leontius of Cyprus, and John of Damascus; these citations help understand the reasoning behind the deliberations, but in the end only what entered into the Definition was actually defined and has the force of law. It is a fundamental rule of canon law that the law is always to be interpreted stricte, that is minimally: only what the canon explicitly imposes can be regarded as obligatory. The

exact terms are therefore of the utmost importance. This brings us to the difficulties of translation. After a brief preamble in which the Fathers of the Council very self-consciously profess their faith in the six preceding ecumenical councils, they present their newly formulated definition, the horos, in two somewhat complex periodic sentences giving first the decree itself and then an explanation. I cannot survey the long history of translations of the horos, which started in the ninth century, but I will focus on the principal problems in its translation. Translators misrepresent the first sentence of the horos in two principal points, first in misunderstanding the grammatical construction, and second in misunderstanding the vocabulary. Then the second sentence they misconstrue by subsuming it into the structure of the first. To begin with the grammar of the first sentence, the overall construction consists of the verb for decreeing, which includes its own subject, horizomen, “we define, we decree, or we ordain,” plus the infinitive of that which is decreed. In its root, the verb horizo means to mark out something by a boundary.58 Horizo plus the infinitive is traditional in church councils.59 For example, in the century leading up to Nicaea II it is used both in the Council in Troullo, decreeing that Christ should be shown in human form, and then again in the iconoclast Council of 754, ruling that one should not make an icon.60 The infinitive following the verb is therefore a complementary infinitive containing the obligation that is imposed.61 It is this all-important sense of obligation that is most often missed in translations. English translators have a tendency to make the obligation into a permission. This appeared a century ago in the translation of Karl J. Hefele’s history of the councils by William R. Clarke, who rendered the construction, we decree that “sacred figures . . . may be depicted,”62 and the recent translation of Daniel J. Sahas follows this lead: “We declare that . . . venerable and holy icons . . . may be set in the holy churches of God.”63 Trying to be consistent, Sahas continues the permissive mood in the rest of the paragraph: “These may be icons of our Lord . . . one may render to them the veneration of honor, etc.” In Greek such a meaning might be conveyed by an adjective of ability, but this would make no sense with the verb horizomen.64 Councils are not in the business of decreeing permissions. Others, such as Auzépy, mistake the infinitive for an indicative, as if the Council were not prescribing but merely describing the actual state of affairs: “we define that the revered and holy images are consecrated” (“nous définissons que les vénérables et saintes images sont consacrées.)”65 But horizo with the infinitive imposes an onus, a constraint, an obligation, to be translated in French by some form of “devoir or falloir,” in German by “sollen, or mussen,” in English by forms of “should, or must.” At the same time Auzépy’s use of “consecrated” calls attention to the second major problem of translators and that 212

is the problem of vocabulary. What is the exact meaning of the verb anatithesthai, (the passive infinitive of anatith mi ) when used with icons? Precisely what is the obligation that the Council places on the faithful? What are they told they must do? Translators have shown a wide diversity in their renditions of the verb. The ninth century Latin translators used the verb proponere66 which is the general verb for putting something in a public place, as for sale,67 and this has influenced most of the subsequent translations. The most current English version is that by Joseph P. Munitiz, in which the operative clause reads: “We decree . . . that the revered and holy images . . . are to be exposed in the holy churches of God.”68 In modern English the word exposed carries the sense of “expositions” as in museum or gallery exhibitions. But icons in church were not merchandise for sale, nor were they pictures on exhibition. On the other hand the translation of anatithesthai as “consecrated” has become the subject of some controversy. Interestingly Auzépy seems to have been unaware that Nikolaus Thon already used the term in Ikone und Liturgie (Trier, 1979), reprinted in Belting, Bild und Kult in 1990.69 To capture the full meaning of anatithesthai Thon found it necessary to resort to a circumlocution: “Wir definieren . . . dass die heiligen Bilder . . . geweiht und in den heiligen Tempeln Gottes aufgestellt und in Ehren gehalten verden sollen.” Hans Belting seemed to endorse Thon’s translation by adopting it in his Bild und Kult, but in the French and English editions he used translations by Gervais Dumeige and Joseph Munitiz that avoid any sense of “dedicating.” and in his discussion of icon theory in general he never introduces the ancient usage of votive offerings. In his recent and comprehensive study of the horos of Nicaea II, Uphus expressly rejects both Auzépy’s and Thon’s use of “consecrated,” and espouses a return to what he calls “the original sense” of the term, by which he means the etymological sense. Thus he translated the expression: “ sollen die erwürdigen und heiligen Ikonen. . . angebracht werden,” and he further explains that “anbringen” is synonymous with “aufstellen.” It therefore carries meanings of “to set, place, or install something, or to exhibit something,” but never the specifically religious meanings, such as “widmen, weihen, opfern or konsacrieren.” But the Greek verb in the Definition is hardly an obscure term. One must start with Liddell and Scott’s Greek English Lexicon, in which three basic meanings are given. In its root etymological sense the word means to lay on, which is the meaning in contexts of merchandise, as for example to put merchandise on board a ship. In the context of discussions of logic, on the other hand, the verb can mean to refer or attribute an opinion to someone. But the commonest use of anatithemi is in a religious context, attested in thousands of inscriptions, in which context it is the technical term for dedicating a votive or thank offering. Recently this use was summarized very succinctly by Rudhardt in his study of cult in classical Greek religion The word anatithemi, Rudhardt tells us, describes “a rite which consists in the act of

taking an object and placing it, setting it up, or hanging it on a consecrated monument or in a consecrated place.” Further he says, “The very act of placing the commemorative object in a temple or within a holy area constitutes by itself a kind of consecration.”70 This is seems to be what Auzépy intended in her translation, but to be more precise Latin law distinguished between consecratio and dedicatio. Consecratio refers to a solemn blessing of a temple or site by duly appointed pontifices on state property and under official authorization of the state.71 For votive offerings the proper term in Latin is rather dedicatio, which is a less formal affair, not requiring official priestly intervention. By dedicatio the owner of a secular object or property might give it to the gods, just as he might give his property to another human individual. By assigning it to the gods he transferred the thing from the common secular realm to the sacred numinous realm, belonging to the class of objects designated as anath mata.72 Such offerings were legally protected and it was sacrilegious to remove or destroy such property. The limits of the holy place were sometimes marked by boundary stones, as on the Acropolis in Athens, and Cicero mentions respect for anath mata as one of the most basic obligations of religion. Since this religious custom does not exist in the English-speaking world our language has no exact equivalent for anatith mi and we have to resort to paraphrases or circumlocutions. In English I suggest the phrase “to offer and dedicate.” The etymological meaning was not the meaning intended by anatith mi in religious documents. Nicaea II is a legal and religious document belonging to a specific tradition. I propose that what Nicaea II is prescribing and imposing on the faithful is the time-honored religious gesture of dedicating votive offerings. The term anatithesthai is critical to the horos. It is the offering and dedicating of the icons for cultic use that separates icons from the everyday furniture of our lives and places them in that special class of objects called anath mata and justifies the cultic gestures of worship that are accorded to other anath mata. The horos singles out the Cross and the Gospel, but it might also have mentioned relics, sacred vessels, and the most sacred of offerings, the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist, which were paralleled with icons during the debates leading up to the decision. Objects in this sacred realm are accorded prostrations, incense, flowers and lights. I would like to go a step further and argue that the Christian tradition of votive offerings was continuous with the ancient custom, which we saw was analysed in detail by Rouse a century ago, a connection that Byzantinists have entirely neglected. Votive offerings were thank offerings in a system of give and take by which humans structured their personal relationships with the divinities. We have seen the diversity of occasions included in this religious usage tradition—Ethelonche’s offering of a sheep to the Nymphs for the birth of her healthy child, Constantine’s 213

gilded statue of Fortuna to thank her for his victory at Chrysopolis, Galbius’ and Candidus’ mosaic thanks to the Mother of God for their arrival in Constantinople with the relic of her maphorion, the emperor Leo I’s thanks to the Mother of God for the consecration of his grandson as Caesar, the monk Philochristos’ thanks to Christ for his reception into the monastery at Sinai. On all such occasions, according to Rouse, “the most obvious offering of a grateful worshipper is the Image of the Patron Deity.”73 In the eighth century, when the term anatithesthai is used in the Council of Nicaea II, it is by no means archaic, obsolete vocabulary. John of Damascus, writing in Jerusalem in 730-733 was quite familiar with the technical term and with the practice it designated. In a passage repeated with minor variations in book I, 24 and II, 17, the author is dealing with the embarrassing parallel between pagan and Christian icon veneration. John uses the verb anatith mi, to describe both the pagan and the Christian practice of dedicating icons. His text reads: daimosi tas eikonas anetithoun ell nes . . . meis de al thei the i sarkothenti kai theou doulois eikonas anatitheamen, that is, “the pagans dedicate their icons to demons and we dedicate them to the Incarnate God and his saints.”74 The pious cultic practice is the same except that pagans are worshipping devils. One should notice, too, that the verbs are both in the present tense. Much later than expected, pagans in the eighth century were still using panel paintings of their gods like the panel of Heron in Etampes. John of Damascus refers to the practice again in II, 11, where he advocates burning the such pagan panels. “If anyone should make images to give glory, honor, and worship to the devil and his demons, we abhor them and deliver them to the flames.”75 Burning images was exactly how Justinian had handled the problem in the sixth century. The term anatith mi remains in use in monastic typica down to the eleventh century. What Nicaea II prescribes, therefore, is the familiar, timehonored religious gesture of dedicating votive offerings of images, the way pagans did in antiquity and the way pagans and Christians were doing in the eighth century. Offering an image to Christ or a saint is the primary gesture of icon cult, and the range of places included in Nicaea’s injunction embraced also public streets and private homes. The dedication of pagan images can also be documented on public streets and in private homes. What the Council does not prescribe, of course, is the dedication of statues, but pagans had generally stopped dedicating statues to their gods in the third century, so that had ceased to be an issue. After the prescriptive sentence the fathers of the Council go on to offer a second sentence by way of explanation, with its famous distinction between proskyn sis and latreia, which is the most often cited portion of the Definition. Byzantinists have thus inverted the priorities: what the Council decrees and ordains is primary, and the explanatory sentence is secondary and not

directly imposed. Translators often break the second sentence into pieces, but the beauty of the inflected Greek language is that its grammar permits the construction of complex periodic sentences the parts of which are all logically coordinated or subordinated without confusion. The explanatory second sentence is grammatically independent from the first, and this is signalled by the change in subject. While the subject of the first sentence is “we,” namely the Fathers of the Council, the subject of the second sentence is “those who behold or contemplate icons,” oi tautas theomenoi. The verb is dianistantai : “those who behold or contemplate the icons are aroused, or awakened.” This is the kernel of the construction. The object of their excitement is developed first of all in a noun clause introduced by pros, “they are aroused to the remembrance and desire of the prototypes.” But then, more importantly, the verb of arousal is developed by two infinitives. This is a classical Greek construction of object infinitives after verbs of willing or desiring.76 “Those who contemplate the icons, are aroused to give them kisses and prostrations and to perform the bringing up of incense and lights to their honor.” Uphus has tried to subsume the construction of the second sentence into that of the first, arguing explicitly that the infinitives aponemein and poieisthai are dependent on the verb horizomen “we decree.” Sahas took a similar reading, repeating in parentheses the verb of decreeing from one sentence to the next. This reading is not possible grammatically; it overlooks the change in subject from one sentence to the next and omits the accusative subjects that would be necessary for the dependent verbs. In Nicaea II the issue of icons is settled not by a new and more subtle definition of what images are but by an explanation of their religious use. Auzépuy has argued that the text of the explanatory sentence relies on a very particular image theory based on the physical connection between a stamped image and its mold, as in coinage.77 In this kind of correspondence, she argues, the icon becomes a guarantee of the original features of the saint and thus authenticates the cult of the saint. But this is not the argument made by the Council. The term charact r is nowhere found in the Definition of Nicaea II. The argument from charact r and imprint belongs to Theodore the Studite and Patriarch Nikephoros in the ninth century.78 Instead, the Definition of the Council uses a very general expression without any implications of stamping, namely eikonik anatyposis, which means simply “pictured representations,” as opposed to the merely verbal representations or descriptions that are supplied by the texts of the Gospels.79 The explanatory second sentence, does not endorse any particular image theory. The Council purposely avoided the philosophical problem of the nature of the image in order to deal directly with the religious problems of cult posed by the dedication of images and the secondary gestures of cult that followed this, namely kisses, prostrations, incense and lights. All these physi214

cal gestures of cult are mentioned frequently in icon stories, and the Council insists on their antiquity in Christian use. In Greek aspasmos means both kissing and embracing, which English translators dilute to “greeting or saluting,”80 without any implication of physical touch. The frequent evidence of wear on icons testifies to repeated contacts by the hands and lips of the devout. The bald assertion in the second sentence that kissing and prostrations are not latreia, adoration, is not argued theoretically or philosophically, for example, on the grounds of some disjunction between the worship that the body is offering and the worship of the spirit. The Council simply says the two are not the same because the worshipper is directing himself to the persons he sees in the icons, not to the wood and pigments materially present before him. The remembrance and desire that are stirred by the sight of icons are directed toward the persons, prototypoi, represented, so that the cult which is offered materially does not get stuck in the material web of things but passes over directly to the holy persons. In brief, the “honor paid to the icon passes to the prototype and prostrations before the icon are prostrations to the person, hypostasis, represented in the icon.” As thank offerings, icons are primarily signs of success in life. By offering an icon the worshipper marks the blessing he has received—his victory in battle, the arrival of a child and heir, his deliverance from illness, his accomplishments and successes in life—and by so doing he pays his debt to God and the saints whom he acknowledges as responsible for his blessings. This is the first level of meaning in icons, what I am calling the primary gesture of cult, designated in the horos by the verb anatithesthai. Beyond that, once the icon has been offered it takes on a polyvalent life of its own. The worshipper and whoever joins him in faith, may offer secondary gestures of cult before the icon, described in the second sentence of the horos—bowing down and prostrating himself, touching and kissing the image, lighting candles and incense before it, decorating it with wreaths and flowers, not because he believes Christ or the saint lives in a board

of wood, and not because he believes the image is certifiably the exact replica of the saint’s features, but because by being offered and dedicated the icon has become a sacred thing, anath ma, and a means of making contact with the divine. [The Decree: first sentence, the primary cultic act of offering icons] Therefore, as we arrive by the royal way following the divinely instructed teaching of our holy fathers and the tradition of the catholic church in which we know the Holy Spirit dwells, we ordain with all exactitude and diligence that, like the image of the revered and life-giving cross, so too sacred and holy icons, whether of paint or mosaic or other suitable materials, should be offered and dedicated in the holy churches of God, on sacred vessels and vestments, on walls and on wood panels, at home and in the streets, whether of the image of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ or of our immaculate Lady the Mother of God or of the blessed angels and all saints and holy men. [The explanatory sentence: secondary acts of icon cult] For the more often they [Christ and the saints] are seen through pictured representations the more are those who contemplate them aroused to the remembrance and desire of their prototypes, to give them [the icons] kisses and prostrations though not true adoration, which according to our faith is due to the divinity alone, but the kind of veneration which we accord to the holy and life-giving cross and to the holy books of the Gospel and the rest of the holy dedicated offerings, and to perform the bringing up of incense and lights to their honor as was the revered custom among the ancients, because honor to the icon passes to the prototype and prostrations before the icon are prostrations to the person represented in the icon.

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CHAPTER EIGHT THE FESTIVAL SET OF ICONS

The theological victory of icons at Nicaea II was actually realized in paint and mosaic only in the second half of the ninth century, after another period of Iconoclasm (814-43). Though Iconoclasm had not touched more distant cities like Ravenna and Rome, in Constantinople and Nicaea it created a major artistic hiatus deleting older icons like those of St Polyeuktos and putting an effective halt to their production. The first token of the revival of icons in the capital was the decoration of the sanctuary of the Cathedral of Saint Sophia [FIG] (867) by the co-emperors Michael III and Basil I, the latter being the founder of the long-lasting Macedonian imperial family. (Chapter Eight, Figure 1. Replica of the Apse Mosaic of the Virgin and Child from the Church of Hagia Sophia at Constantinople. Painted plaster cast, 226 x 148.6cm. MMA, 43.47.1, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund.) The learned patriarch Photios spoke at the unveiling, remarking the liveliness of Mary’s look, as if ready to speak. Indeed her lips are moist, her cheeks blush, and her glance is slightly askew. She is entirely in blue, her Child entirely in gold, their dress following the precedents set in the Blachernai church of the fifth century (see Chapter Five). This post-Iconoclast artistic revival, however, should not be thought of as a return to olden times, a kind of nostalgic historicism, for the artist of the ninth century was facing challenges his predecessors had never dreamed of. The church shell he was decorating had changed radically. The exceptional scale of Saint Sophia was never repeated and the ancient aisled basilicas of the Early Byzantine era gave way to a multiplication of new designs like the Holy Apostles in Athens, that were domestic in feeling, centered around a vertical well of light underneath a little dome that floated on a circle of windows. (Chapter Eight, Figure 2, Holy Apostles Church Athens, 11th century. Interior view by Bruce White, MMA.) The old basilica programs of repeated narrative panels, like pages torn from a Bible, was abandoned and a new system invented. This was a unified program, a carefully contrived set of images that would convey the essence of Christ’s work of salvation in a set of images intimately linked to the liturgy. This was the Middle Byzantine decorative system. As ancient 216

panel-paintings it was still panel-paintings icons that stood at the forefront of the imaginative process. Icons were the locus of experimentation and the medium of transmission of the new ideas. The life of Christ was totally re-thought changing forever the way Christians envisioned the earthly career of their Savior. The new image set is called the “Festival Icons,” in Greek the D dekaeortai (the Twelve Feasts), referring to their relation to the liturgical calendar (though the number is in fact flexible).1 These narrative icons were assigned two key situations in the decoration of the church. First, they supplemented or replaced the traditional set of teaching Apostles on the templon beam, which had defined the sacred space of the sanctuary since the time of Justinian. After the solitary fifth-century Annunciation in the Louvre, the earliest surviving fragment 217

Replica of the Apse Mosaic of the Virgin and Child from the Church of Hagia Sophia at Constantinople. Painted plaster cast, 226 x 148.6 cm. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 43.47.1 Harris Brisbane Dick Fund [Museum photo.] Holy Apostles Church, Athens, 11th c. [Photo. by Bruce White, Metropolitan Museum of Art]

The Washing of the Feet templon icon, tenth century. Icon Sinai, Monastery of St. Catherine, Icon [25.6 x 25?9 cm.]

they often went beyond the Gospel narratives in the on-going process of re-thinking the Gospel. The icons were forged in the heated debates in which the new imagery was formed. The Crucifixion may serve as a telling example, for the reworking of the image of Christ’s death was defined by the controversy of the Orthodox with the Monophysites. [Delete the following: From early Armenia no icons of wood have survived, but their existence is documented stone relief but was copied faithfully from the wooden version nonetheless. ............................................................................. 6 This must be identified with End Delete] radical Monophysitism, called aphthartodocetism, literally “the illusion of suffering,” for, assuming that his nature was absolutely impassible, some Monophysites interpreted the account of Christ’s suffering as an illusion. Eutyches gave expression to this theology by affirming that Christ’s human nature was not homoousios “of the same substance” as our human nature. When Justinian adopted this position in 565 (Chapter Six), it is usually described as a political move. Among the Monophysites, however, it must have represented a real religious conviction. This is expressed by the image of a Christ who cannot suffer. It was against this Monophysitism that a monk of St Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai, named Anastasios, wrote his Hod gos “Guidebook”of the late seventh century, in which he used illustrations of the Crucifixion to demonstrate that “Christ, the son of the living God” had indeed died on the cross.7 The illustrations themselves were made to carry the theological argument and they constitute our earliest mention of representations of Christ dead on the Cross. The first icons of the dead Christ belong to the post-Nicaea epoch, the B50 icon of Sinai of the ninth century being one of the earliest. (Chapter Eight, Added Figure 3B, Crucifixion showing the Dead Christ, Monastery of St. Catherine, Sinai, icon B50. 47.1 x 34.4 cm.) His eyes are closed and he has a gash in his side made by the soldier who wanted to demonstrate that he was already dead (Jn. 19:35). The Apostle John weeps and Mary, dressed in red, holds a vessel to receive the blood from Christ’s side. The framing of the icon has been removed leaving no evidence of exactly how it was mounted, but its size would be suitable for use on a templon. It is in this controversy with Monophysitism that the orthodox image of the Crucifixion was forged, along with a companion image of the Anastasis, the Resurrection showing Christ breaking the gates of Hell to liberate Adam and Eve and trampling Hades underfoot.8 The correct iconography was being disseminated through portable icons, suitable for use on the templon, which soon thereafter were copied into the large Festival Icons, in mosaic or mural paintings that encircled the nave of the church. In Daphni, in the mid-eleventh century, the Crucifixion attains its most accomplished version, and the location is significant

of the new narrative templon set is a tenth-century icon at St; Catherine’s, Sinai, which shows, significantly, Christ Washing the Feet of his Apostles. (Chapter Eight, Figure 3, The Washing of the Feet, templon icon, tenth century Monastery of St Catherine, Sinai, 25.6 x25.9 cm) This was the demonstration Christ gave of his own humility and the model he set for the behavior of one Christian toward another. Incorporated into the liturgy, it was a ceremony that was enacted on Holy Thursday when the celebrant washed the feet of the lesser clergy before celebrating the Eucharist. The new cycle of icons was closely linked to the unfolding of the liturgy. In the second place, the Festival images were being enlarged into a grand mural narrative for the entire church, arranged to encircle the nave.2 They were a set designed to excite a great range of sympathetic emotions, from intimate and tender affections to wrenching occasions of pathetic loss, from celebrations of triumph to startling apparitions. All of these experiences involved the viewers’ participation in the drama of the liturgical calendar. Enterin the church one entered into Christ’s life. There was no single text for the Festival Set of images, for 218

219

Added Figure 3B, Cruciﬁxion showing the Dead Christ, Monastery of St. Catherine, Sinai, icon B50. 47.1 x 34.4 cm.)

for Daphni was the last major caravan stop for merchants bringing goods from the Peloponnesus to Athens. The figure of the dead Christ is far from shameful (stripping the condemned was intentional disgrace) but is drawn to the Athenian canon of Polykleitos’ ideal nude, with a gentle S curve, as if pushing the weight to the right leg, slightly dropping the right shoulder and tipping his head in that direction.9 The anatomy of Christ’s torso is firm, but relaxed, the wound in his side is discreet, more symbolic than viscious. Far from the battered and tortured body of Late Medieval art, in the redemption of mankind is wrought by a perfect human body that has reached repose in death. The image language belongs to the pagan vocabulary of the Classical Greek nude. The revival of painting after Iconoclasm thus ushered in radical re-formulations of the life of Christ and a re-thinking of the community’s experience of the sacred imagery. The new architecture gave special prominence to the dome over the nave, which offered a larger field for artistic invention than the individual narrative panels of the Festival set. The preferred theme adopted for the dome was the trans-temporal theme of the Ezekiel Vision, which we have examined in the program of churches in Bawit and the Red Monastery in Egypt. The first post-Iconoclast dome decoration is now lost but its description by Leo VI at the church of Stylianos Zaoutsas (886-93), suggests how the Middle Byzantine system would approach the new opportunity of the intimate, centrally planned structure. In Leo VI’s description, the cup of the dome was filled with a large half-figure of Christ, in which the artist suggested the greatness of the Lord by making a figure that was too large to fit in its circular frame.10 (Figure 4. Chrisst of Ezekiel’s Vision, Daphni, monastery of the eleventh century AD.) Christ was infinite. Around him congregated a mixed flock of Cherubim and Seraphim, the former all covered with eyes, the latter beating the air with six wings which suggested to Leo VI the hidden nature of the Godhead. The Christ of Ezekiel’s vision existed before historic time, long before the Incarnation, and in the mosaics below him there gathered a crowd of witnesses of Christ’s Incarnation in historic time. This crowd was made up of the human authors of Sacred Scripture, both the prophets of the Old Testament (including kings and priests) and the Apostles of the New, from all of whom the Lord received trans-temporal homage. The domed space of the church was the space of encounter with the Divine presence in the Liturgy. Here the readings of the Gospel were chanted and here the faithful filed up to receive the Communion of the Eucharist. The Ezekiel Vision of Christ with the Cherubim, often abbreviated to a simple Pantokrator image of Christ, summarized the encounter with the Divine in the Liturgy. Responding in song, the faithful joined the Cherubim who surrounded the heavenly throne of the Lord, singing Holy, 220

Holy, Holy. At Saint Sophia the (Delete:Ezekiel Vision was placed in the east vault of the south gallery, over space especially reserved for the Emperor.11) Add: the recent cleaning of the mosaics has uncovered the enormous ninth century Cherubim/Seraphim belonging to the Ezekiel Vision. (Chapter Eight, Figure 5, The Cherubim/Seraphim of the Ezekiel Vision, ninth century The fuller implementation of the Nicaea II decree can be appreciated only in monuments where the Festival Set remains, such as the eleventh century churches of Hosios Loukas or Daphni in Greece, or the twelfth century Martorana in Palermo. Figures in the separate Festival scenes often seem to communicate with one another trans-historically, as Demus observed. Domestic Icons Beyond the narrative Festival Icons, which were particularly designed for church decoration, the Council of Nicaea II also encouraged the employment of single icons of saints both in church and in the home. In church, the individual saints were common in the lower registers where they were more accessible to the laity, who might touch and kiss them and light candles before them. The same array of saints, military or medical, as well as martyrs, was to be found in homes and churches. In the domestic setting, deprived of the protection that churches or monasteries might afford, individual saints’ icons have a poor record of preservation, and surviving examples have often lost the inscriptions to inform us of details of their provenance or commission. They do, however, recall the images we have examined earlier of pagan gods, both in individual figure panels and in complex templates of shrines. In a domestic shrine at home the faithful made anath mata, offerings, of a personal selection of icons for private cult, as illustrated by N. Trachenko’s painting of the icon corner in a peasant home in the Ukraine in the 1890’s. (Chapter Eight, Figure 6, Christmas Eve in Little Russia Monochrome watercolor by N. Trachenko, H Stoa Erga Techn s, Lykabetou 20, Athens.) Judith Herrin has pioneered the research on this important aspect of Byzantine art. In the absence of archaeological evidence Herrin has assembled numerous accounts of domestic icon cult from literary sources, principally lives of saints, in which women play major roles, seeking health and fertility through the intercession of the saints.12 “Name” saints were especially popular in domestic cult; the “name” saint is the saint for whom one was named, and whose calendar feast was more important to the Orthodox believer than his birthday. This gave the domestic shrine a family character. Also popular were martyrs and medical saints, answering to the ancient precedents of Asclepius and Hygeia. Military saints continued the protective functions of the caravan divinities of Late Antiquity, like Heron and Lycourgos or the caravan protector gods in Late Antiquity. 221

Christ of Ezekiel’s Vision, Daphni, eleventh century AD. [Photo. Wash. DC, Dumbarton Oaks] Cherubim of Ezekiel’s Vision, Saint Sophia, Constantinople, ninth century AD. [Photo. Dumbarton Oaks] Cherubim of Ezekiel’s Vision, Saint Sophia, Constantinople, ninth century AD. [Photo. Dumbarton Oaks]

Saints George or Demetrios, were expected to protect the house in which they were hung. An ivory St Demetrios (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1970.324.3), in a carefully fitted cuirass and tensely posed with sword drawn, was ready to come promptly to one’s aid like the sword bearing god on the panel Paris 19919. His frame was fitted for carrying on a pole in the streets to secure the city. He was especially popular in Thessalonike where his relics were enshrined. St George could play a similar role, standing guard with his sword. The equestrian Sts Theodore and George take up the defensive role of the Egyptian equestrian divinity in Hartford 1934.6. In the Middle Byzantine period, ivories have survived much better than wood, the material being almost indestructible, and the sole surviving examples of Middle Byzantine triptychs are ivories. The triptych template could assemble a whole chapel of saints in a single portable icon. We have already referred to the triptych in the Palazzo Vecchio, Rome, for its close relationship to the Late Antique doored shrine in Berlin 17957. Having an inscription of Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos (945-59), a man of learning and even a practiced painter, it reflects his passion for system. Around the central subject of the intercession of Mary and John the Baptist with Christ he has organized five Apostles, eight bishops, and eight soldier saints. The triptych could accompany the emperor 222

223

“Christmas Eve in Little Russia,” 19th c. monochrome watercolor by N. Trachenko, H Stoa Erga Techn s, Lykab tou 20, Athens 10673 (tel. 210 361 5461, or 6974476666.) [Photo. H Stoa Erga Techn s, Mathews has photo]

Ivory Triptych of the Mother of God Hod g tria, 10th c. AD., 18.4 x 11.3 cm. London, British Museum, 1978.5-2.10, [Museum photo.] PROPONIAMO ALTERNATIVA (UTRECHT)

dsit. The Child’s face was damaged too, likely evidence of the late fifth-to-early seventh century Armeian iconoclasm which Vrt an s addressed. It is clear that, like the battered reliefs of St Polyeuktos, someone wanted to salvage this holy image after the iconoclasts’ assault. The most popular of all Byzantine icon types, the Hod g tria Virgin, is here shown as an enthroned full-length figure. Since stone reliefs are not practically portable over great distances, it is safe to assume that the relief is a copy of a wood icon brought from outside Armenia [FIG.] The sculptor had trouble translating the painting into a relief: the Virgin’s left arm is uncomfortably long, and the sculptor has not understood whether the Child was to be encircled with a mandorla or just a halo, but it is clear that the artist placed a special value on the authenticity of the icon he was copying. In her dress the artist carefully observed a distinction between the lighter material of Mary’s tunic and the heavier fabric of her mantle, and her maphorion veil is tucked under her mantle the way it was in the Blachernai images. The Child is dressed in a delicate pleated tunic. His curly hair recurs in another relief the Hod g tria on a capital from Dvin, also dated from the pre-Arab period.14 The correctness guaranteed the authenticity of the image without inhibiting local creativity. The Hod g tria was the most widely-circulated Byzantine image. Whether in single portrait-style panels of the Mother of God and her Child [FIG. 9], or in complex compositions where they are surrounded by smaller figures, whether small and portable, or large and made for special processions, this was the image of reference that became one of the strongest links between the art of antiquity and the paintings of the Christian West.

on his military campaigns. At about the same time, a more modest domestic chapel is organized on a triptych now in the British Museum BM M&LA 1978 5-2. 10.13(Chapter 8, Figure 7, Ivory triptych of Mary Hod g tria, 10th century AD, , 18.4 x 11.3 cm. BM. 1978.5-2.10.) The central panel is taller than the wings to allow their attachment to ledges at the top and bottom, as in the early triptych technology which we have examined. In the central panel the owner has placed a Christ in the arms of his Mother Hod g tria. Mary is presented in a little naos of her own, with spiral colonettes, like the shrines represented in Late Antique panel-paintings London 1891, 4-23,1 and M oscow 6860, while on the wings of the triptych the patron venerated a hierarchy of figures in roundels, archangels on top, then bishops (Sts Nicholaos and Chrysostom) and military defenders on the bottom (Sts Theodore and George). Christ and the bishops have the prominent ears of the listening divinities of Late Antiquity. The military saints have mantles trimmed with bands of pearls, as did the desert guardian divinities before them. The owner of the triptych, probably of the court aristocracy of Constantinople, had saints on all levels interceding with Christ. An Armenian relief icon contributes further important information on the diffusion of the Hod g tria icon type. (Chapter 8, Figure 8. Mary Hod g tria of Ojun, stone relief in situ, before AD 641 height ca. 100 cm.In a niche in the north aisle of the church of Ojun is found a grand relief, about one meter high, of the Mother of God with her Child in her lap. The archaeology is not clear, except that the relief is not part of the church; it does not fit the niche and the stone is smoother and denser than the rough volcanic tufa of which the church is made. The deliberate damage to the proper left side of the Virgin’s face must antedate its installation in the niche, because once installed the arch of the niche would have protected

The Search for the Painters’ Medium The ancient panel-paintings of Roman Egypt turn out to be prophetic in more ways than one. They not only suggest the image types and the cultic observances, that would show up in Christian usage long after the demise of the ancient gods, but they also foretell the future in their technical achievement, which when patiently investigated, connects the paintings even to the Renaissance. Especially significant is our discovery of the medium of egg tempera, which is the preferred medium of the Italian Renaissance painters, from Cimabue to Michelangelo. From our corpus, were we allowed access to test the medium in fifteen panels; egg tempera was found in eleven pieces of the fifteen while encaustic was not present anywhere (See Muller TABLE pag 228 – Inserire “Tabella Muller”). In the scope of this study it has not been possible to pursue all of these connections, but the medium of egg tempera is especially significant. Concerning the medium, to most art historians the mention of Roman painting in Egypt immediately suggests the Fayum mummy portraits, generally called “encaustic” for their pre224

sumed use of a wax medium that resembles oil in the richness of its luster. Tempera is a paint which uses an aqueous binder, either gum, glue, or egg, rather than wax of encaustic. Although it seems at present that Fayum mummy portraits often employed wax, they have not yet been a subject of systematic scientific investigation. The study of 27 Fayum portraits in Stockholm by Agneta Freccaro is a welcome exception. Klaus Parlasca conveys something of the complexity of the situation, for among the 1028 paintings which he catalogued, there are a significant number executed on wood panels and are said to be in some type of tempera. For example, Parlasca’s Volume III of Series B deals with 177 paintings, 118 of which are said to be tempera on panel, 19 tempera on linen, 5 a mixture of tempera and encaustic on panel, and only 35 are said to be encaustic on panel. In the other three volumes, encaustic on panel is said to predominate, but paintings in tempera were not uncommon during the first three centuries AD, the two being used in parallel. Susan Walker has proposed that egg tempera painting was introduced into Roman Egypt around 70 AD.15 But there

is positive evidence that in mural paintings egg tempera had been widely used throughout the Greek and Roman world. For example, Brecoulaki and her co-authors conducted an in-depth analysis of some thirty-eight wall painting fragments from the 1200 BCE Mycenaean Palace of Nestor at Pylos, Greece, which had been collected since excavations began at the site in 1939.16 Samples were selected which had a thick paint layer and did not appear to be excessively degraded by exposure to the elements, and then they were examined using Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectroscopy (GC/MS) analysis. The paint had been applied to a dry lime plaster surface, using what is called an “a secco” technique, which mixed the paint with an adhesive of egg, an egg/glue mixture, or glue. Gum components were also detected during the analyses, but they seemed to be an addition to the main egg and glue components. Brecoulaki’s reports sound very like reports on Early Italian frescoes of the Renaissance, such as Simone Martini’s Maestà in the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena, with its large areas of a secco painting using an organic binder. Mixtures of egg and glue, plus egg and various gums, have been detected in 225

Mother of God Hod g tria of Ojun. Stone relief in situ, pre-641, height ca 100 cm. [Photo, Patrick Donabedian] Mother of God Hod g tria, Episkepsis, late thirteenth century, 107 x 73.5 cm. Athens, Byzantine Museum, T145. [Museum photo.]

a number of Classical Greek wall paintings from Macedonia dating from the fourth century BCE, as reported by Brecoulaki.17 A separate article on the materials for the pediment figures at the ‘Tomb of the Palmettes’ at Lefkadia, from the fourth century BC, confirmed the presence of egg tempera,18 thus demonstrating the continuity of the egg tempera technique in Greece for nearly a thousand years. The paintings that comprise our corpus are separate in use and history from the Fayum mummy portraits, but contemporary with them. When this study commenced in 2000, we had identified only 22 of the paintings that would consititute the corpus we were investigating. With very few exceptions the paint surfaces were grimy and desiccated, and certainly did not appear to be encaustic. Harris, and later Nicholson and Shaw, had identified gum and glue binders in Egyptian paintings, and because these binders have a low refractive index, appearing flat and rather dull, we naturally assumed the paintings in our corpus had the same binders. Three of them had been displayed in the 2000 exhibition Ancient Faces

at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and were called tempera, a supposition later confirmed by our testing.19 The three were dull-looking and much less attractive than the Fayum portraits in encaustic that were the major focus of the exhibition, which is probably why this set of paintings has been largely ignored in the literature. When we became more fully involved in our study and discovered that a Fayum painting in the Petrie Museum in London had been painted with egg tempera,20 we began to entertain the possibility that egg might also be one of the binding ingredients in our paintings. In her study of Fayum portraits in Sweden, Agneta Freccaro offered a cautionary note when she determined by gas chromatographic analysis that three of the paintings that had been catalogued as tempera, were in fact encaustic, of the kind called Punic wax.21 This alerted us to the fact that visual identifications of were not sufficient, and that more sophisticated methods of analysis were necessary to pinpoint the precise binding medium present. With the generous help of Ross Merrill, late Director of Con226

servation at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and René de la Rie, Head of Scientific Research at the National Gallery, we were able to have some of our paint samples analyzed for media. Other samples were sent to Richard Newman at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, who had considerable experience analyzing ancient paint. Media analyses had been conducted on Egyptian materials in the past, as reported by Harris in 1962,22 but with more sophisticated instrumentation that can produce accurate results with a sample 1mm square or smaller,23 we now know much more about the binding media used in Egypt, both during the Pharaonic period and during the Graeco-Roman period.24 Nicholson and Shaw’s updated version of Harris’s book appeared in 2000, and contains fuller information on binding media and other materials.25 Some review of this technology is necessary for understanding the data. Media identification of proteins, such as gums, glue, and egg in very small samples was not perfected until the 1990s. Before then, staining of small cross-sections of paint had been one avenue of research,26 and liquid chromatographic analysis the other. The results, however, were uneven in both. Since the early 1990s, however, amino acid analysis of proteins using high pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) has been applied to small paint samples with excellent results. In this method, the amino acids in solution are passed through a metal column that is filled with tiny resinous beads. Derivatives of various amino acids pass through the column at different rates, and they are analyzed by a detector at the other end. The sensitivity of this technique has permitted the analysis of tiny paint samples no larger than 1mm, whereas before it was thought that identification of media in ancient art was nearly impossible, due to the supposed degradation of the binding medium over millennia. Susanna Halpine at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., was one of the first to perfect the application of the HPLC method to small paint samples, pointing out that a sample as small as one quarter the size of the head of a pin was sufficient for analysis.27 Early analytic techniques required a large sample (1-4mg of paint), which prevented its widespread application. Halpine’s detailed article on HPLC, published in Conservation Research in 1995, is the standard on this procedure.28 Our first sample analyzed was not a paint binder, but rather traces of some clear adhesive that were found adhering to the outside edges of boards comprising the Enthroned God in the Phoebe Hearst Museum, Berkeley (No. 6-21386). The sample was analyzed by Suzanne Lomax in 2001 using infrared microspectroscopy and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry, based on a protocol developed at the Getty Conservation Institute. The presence of certain amino acids and the ratio of alanine/glycine suggested a mixture of egg

and glue. This was the first evidence that a mixed media had been used in Egypt during the Roman occupation, but it was later confirmed by analyses of other paintings in our corpus.29 More recently, Enzyme-linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) combined with Immunofluorescence Microscopy (IMF) has been applied to the analysis of paint cross-sections, and the specific binders found in each layer. This was done for a paint cross-section from the ancient Isis door by Joy Mazurek of the J. Paul Getty Conservation Institute.30 Whereas gross analysis of the binder had detected both egg and glue, the application of this more sophisticated combined technique to a cross-section of paint specifically identified the paint binder as glue. A thin layer of oxalate was found on top of the paint, followed by a thin layer of glair, possibly modern, which is egg white. Egg tempera was not found on the Getty panels. Our first secure identification of egg tempera came in the second paint sample analyzed, from the Heron and Lycourgos panels in Étampes. The subsequent identification of egg tempera in a total of eleven instances in our corpus must count as the single most important discovery from our study. This discovery seemed to link our paintings with Renaissance painting a millennium later, constituting a new vital link in the history of art. In eight of our samples the yoke was mixed with glue or gum, which may have acted as a dispersant. At the same time the total absence of encaustic in any of our panels calls for a re-evaluation of the dynamics of the evolution. Egg as a binder was not used by the ancient Egyptians, and among Graeco-Roman artists it had been found only in wall paintings. Now for the first time we were able to document it in panel-paintings. Tempera was far more malleable a medium than encaustic (which required an elevated temperature to keep it fluid). Panel paintings are eminently portable, and once introduced egg tempera became the standard medium in the Italian Renaissance until gradually replaced by the Flemish introduction of linseed oil in the mid-fifteenth century. One must then hypothesize a connection from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance through Byzantine paintings, such as the icons preserved in the Sinai which remain still un-studied from a technical point of view. The shared compositions and iconography make this the most likely continuity in the long history of panel-painting. The decline in the use of encaustic and the long life of tempera may be due to several factors. Although encaustic was more luminous, it was cumbersome to use in its heated form and in its cold form, as Punic wax, or saponified beeswax, it had a long preparation time.31 The wax had to be boiled in seawater; the resulting white mass of wax was then strained and sodium bicarbonate (nitrium) was added to turn the wax into a soap-like substance that could be diluted with water and applied with a brush.32 Although popular in the early 227

centuries AD, encaustic seems to have been abandoned by the 8th century.33 Egg tempera paint, on the other hand, was easily prepared by mixing yoke, thinned slightly with water, and then adding this to paint slurry made by ground powered pigment in water. The resulting paint could be further thinned with water and applied much like water color to create thin washes. As egg tempera paint dried fairly quickly, brush strokes made with this medium are often quite short and parallel, with little overlapping. Once dry, it could not be further worked with water. When dry, egg becomes bone hard, and is more durable than wax; the painted surface has a slight sheen and is much stronger than either gum or glue tempera. In many of the paint samples removed from our paintings and tested by Richard Newman at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, a second media component was present that could not be specifically identified. The small size of the sample and its degradation over time could explain this. In Tomb III at Hagios Athanasios in Macedonia the second component turned out to be gum tragacanth and fruit gum. In summary, however, one can say that egg tempera had been used widely in antiquity from the Mycenaean period to Late Antiquity, when it appears as the preferred medium for our religious panel-paintings. A colored priming is also a characteristic shared by some of our corpus paintings and the paintings of the Renaissance. The Berlin Septimius Severus is painted on a white gypsum ground over the wood panel. The paint is tempera, but whether glue, gum, or egg has not yet been determined by testing, but as viewed under magnification, the surface reveals tiny air pits in Julia’s hair, and this is also characteristic of late medieval Italian panel paintings done in egg tempera. This painting also has in common with Alexandria Soknebtynis the employment of a grey priming layer. The ground for the Berlin Septimius Severus panel is an overall blue-grey layer, and is similar not only to that found on the painting of Isis in Assiout, but also to that was found in mural painting for the tympanum of the Tomb of the Palmettes in Lefkadia, Greece, which dates to the 4th century BCE. Brecoulaki described this as a cold grey layer on top of two layers of lime-based mortar as providing “a base for the subsequent paint layers, in order to establish the tonal unity of the image from the start by reducing the colors’ intensity and softening their tonal variances.” 34 We see many of these characteristics as well in the Cairo Harpocrates-Dionysus. It appears, for example, that the flesh tones, particularly those in shadow, were prepared with grey priming. Some of this was applied as a wash, which we can see around the eye socket, neck, chin, and the proper left side of his face, whereas on his forehead it was applied in thin, short strokes of a warm grey tone. The flesh tones appear to be a mixture of red and yellow ochre, and white, which were

applied in several values, working both up to the light with final accents or pure white lead, such as along the bridge of the nose, and down to the shadows, which were executed with pure red ochre with final accents in black. Through observation and practice, these artists recognized that flesh in shadow had a warm, greyish-red hue modulating to a red in deepest shadow and to a pale reddish yellow in the light. We observed this in the modeling of Harpocrates-Dionysus’s face and hand, noting how the pale red for the fingers in deepest shadow are then reinforced with a darker red ochre and a brownish ochre, the latter hue undoubtedly made by mixing black and red ochre. The darkest final accent was pure red ochre. At some point between our Late Antique paintings and the icons of the sixth and seventh century in Rome and at Saint Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai, artists began to restrict the colored priming to the flesh tones and replaced grey with the green earth pigment terra verde, which is the mineral glauconite. Since this dull green tone was the complement of red, and more importantly the natural color flesh often assumes in shadow, it was left exposed along the shadowed side of the face, around the eye sockets, below the chin and along the side of the nose. For example, a grey-olive tone is found on several early icons in Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai: Christ Pantocrator (B1), which is dated to the first half of the sixth century; the Virgin between St. Theodore and St. George (B3), and the Virgin of Intercession (B4).35 A dark grey priming underlies the flesh tones on the fresco of the Virgin and Child between Sains Felix and Adauctus in the Catacomb of Commodilla, in Rome, which dates to 528. And among the early Byzantine icons in Rome, we have terra verde underpaint for the flesh in the Madonna from Santa Maria Nova, in La Vergine ‘Hodighitria’ from the Opera Romane, and in the Madonna della Clemenza of Santa Maria in Trastevere.36 Other continuities in painting technique can be followed in the modeling of rounded forms which often consisted of applying the shadow tone perpendicular to the axis of the limb. This point may be illustrated by the comparison paintings from our corpus painting with a typical early Renaissance example. The medium of the Berkley fragment of an Enthroned Soknebtunis (second century AD) was confirmed as egg tempera. The artist uses short, parallel reddish-brown strokes can be seen on the left side of the forearm, with dark brown ochre for the edge. Technically speaking, though more than a thousand years separate this panel-painting from the Annunciation by Guido da Siena in the Princeton University Art Museum (thirteenth century), they have a lot in common. (Chapter Eight, Figure 10, Guido da Siena, The Annunciation, AD 1262-70, Princeton University Art Museum, y144.) (Chapter Eight Figure 11, Guido da Siena, same, Detail). The support was wood, in this case poplar, over which Guido 228

painters who supplied a list of the materials of icons: milk, egg, acacia gum, arsenic for yellow ochre, lapis lazuli for blue, verdigris for green, with gypsum and lime for the white ground. The eggs identify the tempera medium and the milk refers to a casein glue often used with tempera. The pigments on his list were found in actual analyses of our panels, except for lapis lazuli, which was extremely expensive. And as Vrt an s specifies, by contrast, the materials used for inks for writing were sulfuric acid and gall. In Armenia, where Byzantine icons were being copied, it was the Byzantine painters’ formulae that were being followed and that were to be transmitted eventually to Italian Renaissance artists. Cimabue and Frederic Leighton In the art of the Renaissance the personality of the painter himself in a new role as moulder public mores, came to replace the earlier centrality of the cultic image. But the cultic dimensions of Renaissance painting should not be discounted, for they too exhibit a surprising continuity with the ancient art we have been studying. British artist Frederic Leighton (1833-96) was not an icon painter. (Chapter Eight, Figure 12. Frederic Leighton, Cimabue’s Celebrated Madonna is Carried in Procession through the Streets of Florence, AD 1855, London, The National Gallery L275, on loan from Her Majesty the Queen.) His involvement with icons was distanced by his placing them in a remote and somewhat exotic realm, which he resurrected through his erudite reading in Vasari’s encomium of Cimabue (ca. 1240-ca.1302), colored by his own personal experience of religious life on the streets of in 19th century Italy. In depicting Cimabue’s presentation of his masterpiece, Leighton followed Vasari in confusing Cimabue’s Maestà (Louvre, ca. 1280) [FIG. 13], with Duccio’s Rucellai Madonna (Ufizzi, 1285) . Yet he understood the lively competition among the artists in creating oversized Maestà paintings of the enthroned Mother of God, as Belting describes it. The celebration for Cimabue’s painting rivaled the procession celebrating the installation of Duccio’s Maestà in Siena, described by Agnolo de Tura.40 They involved all elements of the city’s population. Leighton observes the drama and high spirits of the icon parade in Florence. First he places a cross-bearing altar-boy at the head of the procession along with a pair of girls strewing flowers on the ground, the ancient cultic gesture. They are followed by the bishop of Florence and his deacon in rich vestments. To the participation of the clergy he then joins a group of devout and noble Florentine women who immediately precede the grand climax of the celebration, Cimabue himself, wreathed in laurel, conspicuous in dazzling white and accompanied by his pupil Giotto. (The laurel wreath would have been worn by supplicants in ancient Greece on their way to the altar.) Cimabue introduces six handsome young fellow artists, carrying on their shoulders the palette

da Siena glued a piece of unbleached linen which served as a ‘tooth’ for the layers of gypsum gesso that were brushed on top. After the gesso had dried, it was lightly smoothed with a straight metal edge. The design was then drawn on the gesso with charcoal or black chalk, or brushed on with dark paint or ink. Those areas that were to receive gold leaf were first covered with a layer of red bole, often called Armenian bole, which was a type of clay mixed with glue; local red clay was also probably available. Gold leaf was then laid over wetted portions of the bole, and when dry, it was burnished to a smooth mirror surface. Metal punches were then used to decorate the surface. There was a strict sequential series of steps artists adhered to in completing a painting, architecture and drapery were followed by painting the flesh.37 Before the application of the flesh tone, a flat wash of terra verde mixed with egg tempera was applied. A powdered clay mineral called glauconite, with a glue binder, was then brushed on. Its color was often a dull green, but one can often find colors that are dark grey green, a pale grass green, or even a bluish green color. In applying the flesh color, the artist premixed three values of this paint: a pure red ochre, another with some white lead mixed in, and a third with even more white added. These values formed an even transition from dark to light, seen in face of the Virgin. Shadows preceded highlights, the shadow called verdaccio (bassèo by the Sienese), was a dark olive brown color consisting of black, yellow ochre, red ochre and white lead.38 Then flesh highlights were added in three values consisting of vermilion, yellow ochre and white, applied in separate parallels. Our corpus panel-painting of Harpocrates-Dionysus offers another example of this ancient Hellenistic painting procedure. Although we were not allowed to test this piece, it was painted in tempera, whether egg, glue, or gum. It was painted on a wood support with a white ground consisting of powdered gypsum, and the priming layer was grey.. In the Annunciation the ancient grey priming was replaced with a terra-verde and was restricted just to the flesh tones. Next we have modeling in several values, often with the paint strokes applied in short, parallel, tightly bunched strokes, and often at right angle to the observed axis of the limb, such as an arm. The evolution of haloes could also be profitably followed from the painted examples of our corpus to the early Byzantine examples in the Sinai icons, some of which are tooled along the outer perimeter with simple circle motifs, destined to be elaborated on in the Renaissance.39 That Byzantine artists were responsible for the transmission of the ancient techniques to the Renaissance is documented by Vrt an s K ertoł, who includes egg in his list of artists’ materials. Challenged by Iconoclasts who objected that the materials used in icons were vile (in the sense of impure and disgusting) Vrt an s went to the trouble of consulting local 229

Guido da Siena, The Annunciation., 1262-70 AD [35.1 x 49.8 cm. Princeton University Art Museum, no. y 144, [Museum photo.]

Guido da Siena, Same (detail), [Museum photo.] Frederic Leighton,Cimabue’s Celebrated Madonna is Carried in Procession through the Streets of Florence, 1855, London, The National Gallery L275, on loan from Her Majesty the Queen [Museum photo.]

bearing his newly finished icon of Mary. This, as we have seen, is exactly the way the pastophoroi in ancient Egypt portered on their shoulders their sacred but far smaller shrines of their gods. Tall candles accompany the Cimabue icon, and two naked children are held aloft (one in the balcony and one at the left margin) to receive the blessing of the icon as it passes. In the background a fixed, gothic shrine shelters another icon, a Christ holding his Gospel, who imparts his blessing on the celebration. Christ and his Mother are therefore both present. Just to the left of the gothic shrine someone is playing a tambourine, reminding us that the participants were singing hymns to the Virgin. De Tura’s chronicle records that the musicians had to be contracted before-hand for the occasion. Finally, the Duke of Anjou, the reigning King of Naples, follows on a white steed. Queen Victoria, governor of the Church of England, also took an active (if unseen) part by enthusiastically buying Leighton’s painting for 600

guineas the first day it went on exhibition at the Royal Academy in London in 1855. Thus did Frederic Leighton share the triumph of Cimabue’s icon half a millennium earlier and win his entry into the Royal Academy. Cimabue, for his part, stands at a grand turning point in the history of painting. A newly discovered Cimabue painting of the Virgin and Child with Two Angels sheds some light on the historic situation.41(Chapter Eight, Figure 14. The Virgin and Child with Two Angels, ca. 1280, London, National Gallery, NG 6583. Emerging by surprise in 2000 from a private collection in Benacre Hall, near Lowerstoft, Suffolk, this little painting was accepted by H.M. Government in lieu of inheritance tax and assigned to the National Gallery (accession number 6583). Measuring only 25.6 x 20.8 cm. it presents a much reduced version of Cimabue’s grand Maestà paintings in the Louvre (ca. 1280) and the Uffizi (ca. 1295), and evidently standing mid way between them chronological230

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ly. Florence, ca. 1280. It was not a study for the larger works intended for the high altar, but a more intimate work of a private devotional character. Its edges show that it belonged to a double register set of small images of the life of Christ, one of which survives, the Flagellation in the Frick Collection in New York42. In this more personal commission the artist felt free to experiment, letting Mother and Child play, in the grander commission of the Uffizi he gave Mary the ancient Isiac hand-to-breast gesture. All three, however, witness the victory of the ancient Egyptian bejewelled and inlaid throne. The throne of the House of David is the throne of the high gods of Egypt. Because Vasari had assigned Cimabue the responsibility for having invented the new Renaissance style, art historians have paid most attention to his innovations, such as his rotation of the throne to the right, to show it in three dimensions, the in-

teraction of Mother and Child, who appear playing with their hands, and the gentle turn of the Virgin’s gaze.43 While these are important steps in the formulation of the new Renaissance style, the powerful antiquity of the work should not be overlooked, for it links Cimabue’s Renaissance firmly to Roman/ Hellenistic panel-painting in Egypt a thousand years earlier. The carpentry construction of the gods’ thrones in our panelpaintings, by a combination of lathe-turned legs with wood panels, has been described in our Egyptian panel-paintings, as well as the decoration of the throne back with a textile that hangs under the top cross-piece, a cloth of honor.44 Cimabue obviously respected the antiquity of the sacred furniture he was illustrating and also included the ancient cloth of honor on the back of the Virgin’s throne. The placement of the Child on the Virgin’s left knee was also traditional with Isis, and Isis showed considerable intimacy 232

Palma, as proposed by Gordon.47 In spite of their radical difference in scale, the little new Cimabue Madonna in the National Gallery and the grand Maestà paintings that he and Duccio were producing at the time shared common sources in Byzantine icon painting; Gordon compares the National Gallery painting to a little Sinai icon of the Enthroned Virgin between Two Angels. [FIG. 15]48 The same composition occurs in a medium-size icon (85 cm. high) in Verroia of the Virgin and Child between Archangels49 [FIG 16]. The competitiveness of the Italian confraternities of the Virgin may explain the growing size of the Italian Maestàs, but Belting is not quite correct in claiming that “the Rucellai Madonna (at 4.5 meters) would not have fit into any church in the East.”50 It is true that wooden icons were not made to this scale in Byzantium, but the mosaic of the enthroned Mother of God in Saint Sophia was a gigantic 6.5 meters and

with Harpocrates in some representations. The gentle tilt of Mary’s head in Cimabue’s painting echoes exactly Isis’ pose in our Isis Lactans Tebtunis fragment 229. The articles of Mary’s dress remain as they were defined in the Blachernai church of 473, except for the color. Mary’s color is generally blue, so that Cimabue’s choice of a red tunic covering her feet is very noticeable. However, Mary wore a tunic of red in three of the earliest icons of the Crucifixion in the Sinai collection to signify her participation in Christ’s suffering, though this is not remarked upon.45 It is certainly noteworthy that the only other surviving panel of the set to which Cimabue’s painting belonged is the Frick Collection Flagellation. Whether or not they were done for a confraternity of flagellants, as Meyer Shapiro had argued,46 the two paintings refer to the blood of Christ, and very likely the complete set resembled the Passion sequence of the diptych of the Master of San Martino alla 233

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Cimabue, The Maestà, ca. 1280. Paris, Musée du Louvre, no. 254. 4.27 x 2.80 m. [Museum photo.] The Mother of God Hod g tria Peribleptos, with Archangels on upper register, fourteenth century [85 cm.]. Veroia, Greece (Mother of God, no. 82, p. 483) [Museum photo.]

Cimabue, The Virgin and Child with Two Angels,ca. 1280, London, National Gallery, NG 6583. (Byzantium Faith and Power no. 208, p. 349) [Museum photo.] The Enthroned Virgin with Two Angels, 12th century. Sinai, St. Catherine’s Monastery [Photo. Princeton Weitzmann Archive]

the apse mosaics of Blachernai were probably not far behind. Moreover, the Byzantine apse images were done in gold mosaic, which the Italian confraternities could not match. Both the Maestà versions and the reduced versions of these images were cultic images. The formality of the ancient cultic gesture of votives could accommodate offerings by a community or confraternities as well as by private citizens.51 The manner of venerating these Italian icons entered directly into their scale. Leighton understood well that the first cultic gesture involved in icons was the very offering of the paintings, which is the subject of his prize-winning canvas. In honor of the Mother of God the people of Florence, under the leadership of their bishop, their prince, and their outstanding artists, were “setting up” or “offering” the grandest painting they could manage, which they were carrying with song and ceremony to its installation in a sacred temple, the church of Sta Maria Novella in Florence. In spite of mutual recriminations and excommunications, the cultic practices of venerating images were much the same in the Greek, Latin, Coptic and Armenian churches. The installation of the painting was the first act of cult, and once installed, the painting was expected to attract the daily veneration of the faithful. The one great East/West difference was the offering of Mass on an altar directly before the image in the Catholic observance. This was dictated by the wishes of the donor (often a confraternity) who established the calendar of Masses and other observances before the icon. In the Greek monasteries the founding patrons prescribed in their constitutions, or typica, the setting out of the icons on stands (proskyn taria) for prayers and the lighting of lamps.52 The cultic practice of offering lighted lamps before the images was common to both the Latin and Greek churches. The documents offer prescriptions of which icons are to be illuminated, on which feasts, and in which locations within the church or monastery. Similar observances in the West can be traced in wills and endowment documents. For example, returning to the paintings we have been following in Florence, in 1312 one Richiuccio di Puccio left bequests in his will for the continuous lighting of lamps in Santa Maria Novella to be set before the Maestà of Duccio and the painted Crucifix of Giotto.53 His private gesture in no way detracted from the community’s cult of the same icons. In the Greek church, the organization of icons on the templon barrier was well established already in the sixth century, as we have pointed out at St Polyeuktos and Saint Sophia, and the cult of such icons was firmly fixed in the liturgy. We

have observed how the Sunday Vespers liturgy included the lucenarium, the lighting of the lamps before the icons on the templon barrier. The daily Eucharistic liturgy also had a fixed place for the veneration of images with the offering of incense in both of the processional Entrances of the Mass. In the First Entrance the offering of incense accompanied the procession of the Gospel book and in the Great Entrance incense accompanied the bringing up of the Bread and Wine, and on both occasions the carrying of incense and lamps naturally included incensing the altar and the icons that surrounded it. We have noted how the paintings of the Red Monastery (of ca. 600) demonstrate that, like lamps, censers also could be hung before icons to offer them honor.54 While the churches of the separate Christian confessions – Latin, Greek, Armenian, Coptic – conducted their religious observances according to separate rituals in sanctuaries of very distinct plans, the placement of icons in situations of honor and the observance of ancient cultic gestures before them remained a constant that united them, in the face of their an-iconic neighbors.

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APPENDIX I PIGMENT CHART

The pigment chart lists fifteen different paintings from which ground and paint samples were removed for analysis, or in one instance, identified visually under magnification. A third category in the chart lists the analytic results. Various methods were used to identify the pigments, one being electron dispersal spectroscopy coupled with electron probe micro-analysis (EDS-EPMA), which was conducted on two samples at the Princeton Materials Laboratory at Princeton University. Other methods of analysis used were polarized light microscopy (PLM), transmitted light microscopy (TLM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray fluorescence (XRF), wet chemical tests, and ultraviolet fluorescence, the latter being used to identify madder lake, a pink colored dye.

APPENDIX II MEDIA CHART

The distinctive color and contraction craquelure of bitumen was observed under magnification on the painting of Septimus Severus and Family in Berlin, and also photographed. This would be one of the earliest identified uses of this material as paint. Other than bitumen, there were no real surprises of the various pigments being used in antiquity. Finding orpiment used on the Goddess in Mourning (no. 12) to simulate gold was interesting, since this pigment has a cleavage pattern similar to mica, and reflective properties simulating gold.

The fourteen paintings listed below, with the analysis of the paint binding medium found in each, represent an important addition to the history of ancient Roman panel painting, particularly those called “tempera.” Apart from the painting Goddess in Mourning from Saqqara, now in the British Museum, which was found to be painted with a gum medium, the remaining thirteen paintings analyzed for media at two labs in the United States confirm that egg and egg-glue binder mixtures for paint were probably more widespread throughout the Mediterranean region than was encaustic. The sole painting to be painted with gum represents a Greek fourth century BC painting, the oldest in our group and probably completed before the egg tempera technique had been well established in Egypt. The remaining thirteen paintings all reflect the Greek technical influence, later adopted by the Romans, which we can trace back to the fourteenth century BC Mycenaean culture at Pylos, Greece.

already occurred. The coordinates of each sample was recorded, and then each sample was placed in small plastic or glass vial, labeled as to its contents, and sealed with tape. Upon returning to the United States, the first four samples were sent to Suzanne Lomax at the Research Lab of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., where they were analyzed using gas chromatography/mass spectroscopy, following a protocol developed by the Getty Conservation Institute. The remaining nine samples were sent to Richard Newman at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Research Laboratory, where they were analyzed using High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) to detect the ancient binding media. Because the paint layer was applied to a gypsum ground bound with glue, it is possible that some of the glue detected in the paint could have come from the ground, even though care was taken to test only the paint. Abbreviations have been incorporated for the type of analysis used on the samples. HPLC is High Performance Liquid Chromatography, and GC/MS is Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectroscopy.

The paint samples measured approximately a millimeter in size, and were removed under magnification from areas where paint loss had

Object

Ground

Pigments

Analysis Results

Object

Sampling Location

Surface Color

Type of Analysis

Results

1.Ann Arbor, Kelsey Museum, Enthroned Youth, Inv. No. 88617.

Gypsum

Brown paint, iron based

TLM and wet chemical test for iron

1. Ann Arbor, Kelsey Museum, Fragment of Head, Inv. No. 23975

Bottom, 2.1cm from right edge

Flesh tone

HPLC

Mixture of glue, egg and gum

2. Ann Arbor, Kelsey Museum, Nemesis, Inv. No. 88723.

Gypsum

Massicot, iron oxide.

XRD for massicot, gypsum; wet chemical test for iron

2. Ann Arbor, Kelsey Museum, Eagle of Ascension, Inv. No. 23976

4.8 cm up and 6.9cm over from left edge

Brown

HPLC

Mixture of glue and egg

3. Berkeley, Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology, Door panel of Armed God, Inv. No. 6.21385

Gypsum

Brown containing iron and magnesium

EDS-EPMA analysis of all elements

3. Ann Arbor, Kelsey Museum, Kore, Inv. No. 28807

14.7cm up and .3cm from left edge

Brown

HPLC

Mixture of glue, egg and gum

Red

HPLC

Mixture of glue and egg

Gypsum

Indigo, yellow, madder lake, massicot

Wet chemical test for gypsum, indigo; PLM for massicot, UV ﬂuorescence for madder lake

4. Berkeley, Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology, Door panel of Armed God, Inv. No. 6.21384

From sleeve of military god

4. Berkeley, Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology, Soknebtunis Enthroned, Inv. No. 6.21386 5. Berlin, Ägyptisches Museum, Sel n , Inv. No. 14443

Gypsum

Massicot

Wet chemical test for gypsum; PLM for massicot

Left edge of small panel, 12.7 cm up

Amber colored adhesive

GC/MS

Mixture of glue and egg

Bitumen

Analysis based on color, contraction craquelure under magniﬁcation

5. Berkeley, Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology, Soknebtunis Enthroned, Inv. No. 6.21386 6. Berkeley, Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology, Soknebtunis Enthroned, Inv. No. 6.21386

Left edge of small panel

Red brown

HPLC

Mixture of glue and egg

7. Berlin, Ägyptisches Museum, H r n, Inv. 9.5 cm up and 5.6cm over No. 15979,

Green

GC/MS

Egg yoke

8. Brussels, Museés Royaux d’Art et l’Histoire, H r n and Lycurgos, Inv. No. E7409.

11.3cm up and .8cm over from left edge of frame

Red brown

HPLC

Glue and egg

Blue

HPLC

Egg yoke

GC/MS

Egg yoke

GC/MS

Plant gum (possibly a mixture)

GC/MS

Glue

6. Berlin, Ägyptisches Museum, Septimus Severus and Family, Inv. No. 31329 7. Berlin, Ägyptisches Museum, H r n, Inv. No. 15979,

Gypsum

8. Brussels, Museés Royaux d’Art et l’Histoire, H r n and Lycurgos, Inv. No. E7409

Gypsum

Orpiment

Wet chemical test for gypsum; PLM test for orpiment

9. Étampes, France, Thierry Coll., Heron and Lycourgos

Gypsum

Madder, Egyptian blue

UV ﬂuorescence for madder; EDS-EPMA for Egyptian blue

Madder accents.

UV ﬂuorescence for madder

9. Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Nemesis and Harpocrates, Inv. No. 685

3cm up and 5cm over from right

Wet chemical analysis for gypsum

10. Étampes, France, Thierry Coll., H r n and Lycourgos

Loose paint fragment in display case

XRF and Raman results

11. London, British Museum, Goddess in Mourning, Inv. No. BM1975.7-28.1

Background

10. Hartford, Wadsworth Athenaeum, Equestrian God with Axe, Inv. No. 1934.6

Wet chemical test for gypsum

11. London, British Museum, Harpocrates in naos, Inv. No., BMGR 1891.4-23.1

Gypsum

12. London, British Museum, Goddess in Mourning, Inv. No. BM1975.7-28.1

Gypsum

Red ochre, white lead, yellow ochre, carbon black, vermilion, Egyptian blue, orpiment

13. Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum, Door panel of Isis, Inv. No. 74.AP22

Gypsum

Jarosite, Egyptian blue, iron oxide red, charcoal, lead PLM white, calcite, gypsum, madder lake

14. New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery, Door panel of Nike, Inv. No. 1929.288. 15. Providence, Rhode Island School of Design Museum, H r n, Inv. No. 59.030

Gypsum

Madder lake, orpiment

UV ﬂuorescence; orpiment identiﬁed by D.V. Thompson in 1929

Iron oxide brown

Wet chemical analysis of gypsum and iron oxide

238

Grey

12. Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum, Door panel of Isis, Inv. No. 74.AP22 13. New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery, Door panel of Nike, Inv. No. 1929.288.

From orb

Blue

HPLC

Glue and egg

14. Providence, Rhode Island School of Design Museum, H r n, Inv. No. 59.030

Bottom edge

Brown

HPLC

Glue and egg

239

CORPUS OF PANEL PAINTINGS FROM ANCIENT EGYPT Following is a list of archaeological material identified in this book as the “corpus”: a total of fifty-nine panel paintings and fragments of panel paintings from Egypt in Roman times. These works, which had been unstudied by both Egyptologists

CITY | INV. NO. Alexandria 22978 Ann Arbor 23975 Ann Arbor 23976 Ann Arbor 28807 Ann Arbor 88617 Ann Arbor 88723 Assiout 82 Berkeley 6.21384 Berkeley 6.21385 Berkeley 6.21386 Berlin 14443 Berlin 15978 Berlin 15979 Berlin 17957 (lost) Berlin 17957 (lost) Berlin 19644 Berlin 31329 Brussels E 7409 Cairo JE 31568 Cairo JE 31569 Cairo JE 31570 Cairo JE 31571a Cairo JE 31571b Cairo JE 38250 Cairo JE 87191 Copenhagen 685 Copenhagen 711 (lost) Étampes, private collection Hartford 1934.6 Kellis/Ismant el-Kharab London BM 1891.4-23.1 London BM 1891.4-23.2 London BM 1975.7-28.1 London UC 16312 Malibu 74.AP.21 Malibu 74.AP.22 Moscow 5786 Moscow 6860 New Haven 1929.228 Oxford 1922.237 (lost) Oxford 1922.238 (lost) Oxford 1922.239 (lost) Paris, Louvre AF 10878-79 Paris, Louvre E10815 Paris, Cabinet de Médailles 19919 Providence 59.030 Tebtunis 212 Tebtunis 214 Tebtunis 215 Tebtunis 216 Tebtunis 218 Tebtunis 219 Tebtunis 220 Tebtunis 221 Tebtunis 223 Tebtunis 224 Tebtunis 227 Tebtunis 228 Tebtunis 229

NOTES

and historians of Early Christian art, constituted a primary research tool for the authors in determining the relationship between painting in the ancient world and painting in the medieval world.

TITLE Soknebtunis and Min Fragment of Head Eagle of Apotheosis Kore Divinized Adolescent Nemesis, Goddess of Justice Isis Armed God (Heron and Lykourgos?) (left door) Armed God (Heron and Lykourgos?) (right door) Soknebtunis/Kronos on a Throne Selene Soknebtunis and Amun Heron and Lykourgos Armed Gods (left door panel) Armed Gods (right door panel) Harpocrates on a Lotus Blossom Septimius Severus and Family Heron and Lykourgos Harpocrates/Dionysus Divinized Adolescent Equestrian Caravan God Sobek Presiding over the Armed Gods (with Oxford 1922.238)† Sobek Presiding over the Armed Gods Hathor/Aphrodite Equestrian Dioscurus Nemesis and Harpocrates God in Bust, and God with Double Ax Heron and Lykourgos Caracalla as Heron Isis Harpocrates in a Naos Fragment of Enthroned God with Scepter Goddess in Mourning Sobek/Horus (fragment) Serapis Isis Ares and Aphrodite Sobek-Re and Pramarres Nike Carrying Crown Armed God Carrying a Club Sobek Presiding over the Armed Gods (with Cairo JE 31571a)† Dioscurus Fortuna-Tyche (Kale Anthousa) An Equestrian Dioscurus with Gold Throat Guardian God with Sword Heron and Nemesis Enthroned Isis (fragment) Border of textile with palmettes (fragment) Armed God with Double Ax (fragment) Isis (?) (fragment) A Wall Hanging (fragment) Anonymous goddess with ﬂoral crown (fragment) Demeter/Kore with polos (fragment) Textile and fragment of feather/scale motif (fragment) Right Hand of the Child Harpocrates (fragment) Goddess [probably Isis] with Gold Lips (fragment) Isis Lactans (fragment) Goddess’s Hand with Rings (fragment) Isis Lactans (fragment)

NOTES

*See Rondot 2013. †Cairo JE 31571a and Oxford 1922.238 (lost) are parts of the same work.

240

FIGURE NO. Fig. 1.18 not shown* not shown* Fig. 1.5B Fig. 3.2 Fig. 1.11 Fig. 3.16 Fig. 3.28A Fig. 3.28B Fig. 3.27 Fig. 5.3 Fig. 1.6 Fig. 1.7 Fig. 3.33 Fig. 3.34 Fig. 3.9B Fig. 3 Fig. 2.3 Fig. 3.4 not shown* Fig. 8 Figs. 11, 3.37, 3.39 Figs. 3.38, 3.40–3.42 Fig. 3.25 Fig. 1.22 not shown* not shown* Fig. 2.5 Fig. 2.15 Fig. 1.24 Fig. 3.7 not shown* Fig. 2 Fig. 2.9 Fig. 3.20 Fig. 3.19 Fig. 4 not shown* Fig. 1.16 Fig. 3.43 Figs. 11, 3.37, 3.39 not shown* Fig. 1.10 Fig. 3.52 not shown* Fig. 2.7 Fig. 3.18 Fig. 3.47 not shown* Fig. 3.17 Fig. 3.48 not shown* not shown* not shown* Fig. 3.49 Fig. 3.50 Fig. 3.12 Fig. 3.51 Fig. 3.15

Capitolo primo 1 Parsons 2007. Bagnall 2009, Hunt 1932. 2 On Christian papyri see Edwin A. Judge and S.R. Pickering,”Papyrus Documentation of Church and Community in Egypt to the mid-Fourth Century,” JAC 20 (1977) pp. 47-71; Edwin A. Judge, “Papyri,” in Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, ed. Everett Ferguson (NY and London, 1990), 686-91. 3 Rondot 2013, p. 145. 4 Frankfurter 1998, p. 15. 5 Rondot 2013, pp. 21-6. Rondot hypothesizes that the five panels deposited with no accompanying information in the Cairo Museum in 1889, (numbered JE3156831571b), all came from the excavations that (Sir) William Matthew Flinders Petrie had been conducting in Hawara in 1887-89. This problem posed by shaky or unknown provenance is by no means confined to panel paintings. See Elizabeth Marlowe, Shaky Ground, Context, Connoisseurship and the History of Roman Art (London, 2013). 6 Frankfurter 1998. 7 Kalavrezou 1975; Elsner 1995; Törôk 2005. Not available at the time of this writing was the report on the ARCE sponsored cleaning and conservation project by Michael Jones and Susanna McFadden, Art of Empire, The Roman Frescoes and Imperial Cult Chamber in Luxor Temple (New Haven, 2015). 8 Rondot 2004. 9 See below p. xxx. 10 Rubensohn 1905, p. 1, n. 2. 11 Rubensohn 1905, p, 4, figs. 3a and 3b. 12 Rubensohn 1905, pp. 5-16. Rubensohn described the excavation further in his un-published ‘Papirusunternehmen Tagebuch,’ pp. 170-91, on deposit in the Aegyptisches Museum library in Berlin. 13 Elsner 1998, p. 110; Török 2005, pp. 33236, and plate XII. 14 Török 2005, pp. 235-36, figure 77 and pl. XIII. 15 Elsner 1998, p. 110, commented on in Török 2005, p. 234. 16 Rubensohn 1905, pp. 5-16. 17 Thomas 2001, p. 29. 18 Rouse 1902. 19 The term “shrine” is not appropriate as it is more usually employed to designate a place for venerating a sacred object or a tomb, which does not enter our considerations here. 20 Rondot 2013, pp. 122-27. 21 Rondot 2013, pp. 349-52 and table of typology fig.14. 22 See Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. The term can be further applied to the reconciliation of the gods to their Christian use. See Thomas 2000, pp. 61-65. 23 Rondot 2013, pp. 128-31. 24 Rubensohn misidentified the figure as Athena from the Gorgon breastplate, p. XXx 25 Rondot has devoted two articles to the knotty question of their iconography and returned to it in his book, still confessing

that he could not offer a definitive solution. Rondot 2001; Rondot 2005; Rondot 2013, pp. 299-300. 26 Rondot 2013, pp. 349-52. 27 Frankfurter 1998, p. 107 28 Guglielmi 1994, pp. 53-68. I am in debt to Laszlo Török for this information. 29 Kinney 2009, pp. 195-203. 30 Keinath 1936, pp. 86-89. 31 Caseau « Incense », p. 14. 32 PGM XIII. 343 in Greek Magical Papyri in Translation including the Demotic Spells, tr. H.D. Betz (Chicago/London, 1986), p.172. 33 Rutschowscaya 1986, nos. 363 and 537; I am grateful to Dominique Bénazeth for sharing her interpretation of the relief with me. 34 Rutschovscaya 1992e. 35 The name “Jesus” is the Hebrew/Aramaic for Sot r in Greek, meaning savior, a common epithet among the gods of Egypt. 36 Mathews 2009-10. 37 Becatti 1967, p. 261 and fig. 234. 38 Swindler 1929, pp. 269-72. 39 Mathews 2010, pp. XXX 40 For a recent survey of the development of the sanctuary barrier from a low chancel screen to a colonnaded templon, with or without images, to the medieval iconostasis see Bortoli-Doucet, “L’Iconostase;” for earlier studies of the templon and its decoration see Walter, “Origins of the Iconostasis, and “A New Look at the Byzantine Sanctuary Barrier.” On the sixth century addition of icons to the templon barrier see Chapter XX 41 Rutschowscaya 1992 c, p. 146. 42 On the history of the excavation of Karanis see Gazda 2004 and Thomas 2001, pp. 3-6. 43 Gazda 2004, p. 4. 44 Grabar 1986 reproduced the Hamzeh Carr watercolor of the east wall murals (pl. IV), referring to them only as “icons of local divinities” (p. 82). Mary Vokes in her unpublished thesis of 1992 identified most of the figures, pp. 15-16. Gazda 2005, offers only a brief description, pp. 41-42. The most thorough analysis to date is that of Rondot 2013, pp. 62-64, relying on Vokes. 45 Boak and Peterson 1931. 46 Compare her throne with that of the supposed Constantine in the Alexandria Graeco-Roman Museum, no. 5934, Török 2005, fib. 36. 47 McKenzie, Alexandria, p. 205. 48 Gazda, Karanis, pp. 8-18. 49 Vokes 1992, p. 17. 50 Rondot 2013, p. 184-85. 51 Rondot 2013, pp. 277-78. 52 Beat Brenk, The apse, the image and the icon: An historical perspective of the apse as a space for images (Wiesbaden, 2010). 53 Orr 1972, chap IX. 54 Henein and Wattmann 2000, pp. 150-86. 55 Frankfurter 1998, pl. 17. 56 Keinath 1936, pp. 90-96, 110-113. 57 Gottry, Domestic Religion. 58 For example Bianchi-Bandinelli 1991 and Ling 1991.

59 Vokes 1992. 60 Root 1979, p. 57. 61 Rondot 2013, pp.182-83. 62 Thomas 2009, citing Maximus of Turin, Homilia 60. The Christian symbolism of the eagle was explored by Maguire 1987, p. 65. 63 Thomas 2009, figs. 100 and 107. 64 The Christian uses continue on a wood seal in the Louvre AF 1465 and a relief from Bawit in the Louvre, AF 6975 (Rutschowscaya 1986, pp. 73 and 101), and in the first cathedral of Faras of the 7th c., Shaw and Nicholson 1995 s.v. Faras. 65 Rondot 2013, p. 181. 66 Bauer 1931, vol. II, pp. 181-93. 67 Baur 1931, vol. II, pl. II, 2. 68 Baur 1931, vol. II, p. 181. 69 Rondot 2013, pp. 75-80. 70 Rondot 1998, pp. 242-255 ; Rondot 2004, pp. 33-46 ; 71 Rondot 2004, fig. 71. 72 “Ahmed Fahry Eff a retrouvé, dans les ruines de maisons d’époque gréco-romaine, plusieurs séries de petits objets de culte domestique : une planchette peinte à tempera, des miniscules tabourets et des autels à feu en miniature. » Diotron 1940, pp. 923-35. 73 Rondot 2013, pp. 112-3. 74 Rondot 2013, p. 270. 75 Martin 1973, p. 12. Rondot is simply mistaken in labeling the piece “Pinax trouvé dans la nécropole des animaux sacrés,” Rondot 2013, fig. 5, p. 37. Rondot excluded this panel from the corpus of his study because of its early date. 76 Report by S. Tanimoto, Janet Ambers, and Rebecca Stacey, using GCMS, XRF and Raman spectroscopy. 77 Private correspondence with Janet Ambers, quoted with her permission. 78 For this measuring stick of life see Rondot 2013, p. 146. 79 Rondot 2013, pp. 30-32 80 Whitehouse 1994. Capitolo secondo 1 Cf. Svenko 1993 ; Tueller 2011. 2 Bowman 1986, p. 25. 3 Rouse 1902, especially chapter 11, “The Formulae,” pp. 322-334. 4 Liddell and Scott, s .v. 5 Smyth 1956, nos.1940-41. 6 See Tueller, 2011, chapter 4, for epigrams in which the monument converses with the dedicant. 7 Orlandos 1965, pp.200-06. See also Robertson 1975, vol. I, pp. 120-121. 8 On the reading of this and related dedications see the recent Gaifman 2008. However Gaifman revises Orlandos’ translation unnecessarily making the verb into a passive when it is clearly active. Moreover she is unaware of Rouse’s fundamental study of the votive offering. 9 Orlandos 1965, pp. 204-205. 10 Kaltsas 2001, Museum no. 1341, catalogue no. 267; Pandermalis 2014, pp. 66-67. 11 Hèrondas, Mime IV, 12-19. 12 Greek Anthology, VI, 174, Paton 1960, p. 374, my translation.

241

13 Rondot 2013, p. 141. 14 The inscription was first published by Rassart-Debergh 1991, p. 46. INSERT Entering an inscription beside the god’s ear might be compared to the Jewish custom of placing a written prayers to God between the stones of the temple wall in Jerusalem, except that the inscriptions in our panelpaintings are more public. The Egyptian gods, moreover, could be represented as responding favourably to one’s prayers by endowing them with golden throat or golden lips. Cf. Paris, Louve E10815 and Tebtunis fragment 224. On the consultation of oracles, which often involved the mediation of priests or holy men, see. Frankfurter 1998; pp. 145-97. 15 Nachtergael 1996, pp. 129-42. 16 Rondot 2013, pp. 52-53. 17 Rondot 2013, pp. 160-161 and 303-305. 18 Petrie 1927, p. 72. 19 Liddell and Scott, s.v.with references to PTeb.27.31 (2nd c. BC) and POxy.387 (Ist c. AD). 20 Weitzmann 1967, pp. 37-38. 21 Rouse 1902. Among recent studies of the votive phenomenon see Baumbach 2004: Harris 1995; Keesling 2008; Pinch 1998. Also Nathaniel Jones forthcoming. 22 Compare Geraldine Pinch’s definition: “The term ‘votive offering’ is used in its general sense of a ‘gift to a deity’ rather than in its specific sense of a ‘gift in fulfilment of a vow.’” Pinch, 1998, p. xxxv. Dictionary articles on “votive” fail to acknowledge this larger sense of the religious phenomenon and treat it simply as “vowed” offerings. Cf. DACL and Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, s.v. 23 Pollitt 1966, p. 109, citation of Suetonius, The Divine Augustus, XXVIII, 3 ff. 24 Rouse 1902, p. 357. 25 Keesling 2008, p. 199. 26 See above, p. ??.27 Harris 1995, p. 243. 28 Pollitt 1966, p. 103. 29 See above, p. ??. 30 Pollitt 1966, pp. 114-116. 31 Pollitt 1966, pp. 133 and 148, n. 110. 32 See below p. ??. 33 Leach 2003, p. 197. 34 Sande 2005, pp. 85-88. Cmuriously, Sand never refers to Rouse 1902. 35 Mathews 2001. 36 Sande 2005, p. 89. 37 Veyne 1983. 38 Greek Anthology, VI, 42, p. 320. 39 Chuvin 1990, p. 1. 40 See below p. XXX 41 Gaifman 2012. 42 Sande 2005, p. 88. 43 Bernand 1960 ; Bernand 1975 and 1981. 44 Rondot 2004, p. 165. 45 Rondot 2013, p. 33. Rondot illustrates the painting in his fig. 4 and observes that it is very close to the paintings of his “corpus” and is the only document with a precise date. 46 First published by Neugebauer 1936. 47 Rondot 2013, pp. 356-57. 48 Becatti 1967, pp. 230-31. 49 Neugebauer 1936, pp. 163-67. Art histo-

rians have ever thereafter referred to the round form of the painting as an imago clipeata, which they allege had imperial connotations. Heinen 1991, p. 286; Belting 1994, p. 106. 50 Rondot shared in the microscopic inspection of the panel with Muller and myself, and confirmed our conclusion that the tondo cutting of the painting is secondary. See Rondot 2013, p. 33. 51 On the reverse of the panel Muller observes three puzzling features: first, the grain of the wood is not vertical but runs diagonally from 7 o’clock to 1 o’clock; secondly the thickness of the panel is tapered from 1.5 at the top to .5 cm.; and thirdly two holes were drilled equidistant to the orientation of the wood grain but were filled in before the painting of the panel and may be signs of some earlier use of the board itself.. 52 Bitumen was usually ground in a medium such as oil or glue, and applied as paint. No varnish layer was detected. In the absence of pigment sampling, we can only surmise what the paint medium is. The dry looking character of the paint layer with tiny air pits in the wreath on Caracalla’s head,indicates an aqueous paint mediumsuch as egg or egg and glue, rather than encaustic. 53 Becatti 1967, pp. 214-15 and fig. 191. 54 L’Orange 1947, pp. 77-86. 55 McCann 1968, pp. 53-57. 56 McCann 1968, p. 57. 57 Historia Augusta, chap. 17-19, D. Magie 1922-32 Loeb Classical Library, pp.XXX 58 Neugebauer remarked that Septimius Severus is not depicted in the official garments of triumph. Neugebauer 1936, p. 159. Nowicka observes that he wears a white tunic with gold and purple borders and a white mantle. Nowicka 1968, pp. 37-38. 59 Alföldi 1934, 57-59. 60 “Serapis and Isis thus became linked with the luck and prosperity of the emperor, which would find fulfillment in the promise of a new Golden Age to be established by his reign.” McCann 1968, p. 57. 61 Rondot takes the murder of Geta in 212 as the date of the erasure, but this is only the date post quem. Rondot 2013, p. 33. 62 Neugebauer 1936, p. 157. The myth of the excrement is still repeated in Heinen 1991, p. 279. 63 Peter Parsons 2007, p. 69. Parsons reviews all examples of Geta’s purge in documents and monuments, pp. 68-70. 64 Oxyrhynchus Papyri XII, 134-45: Greek text; pp. 136-40; English translation, pp. 140-42;. Notes, pp. 142-45. The text and translation of the first of the four fragments of this papyrus are re-published without notes in A.S. Hunt and C.C. Edgar, ed. Select Papyri, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA, 1932), pp. 530-35. 65 Krüpe 2011. 66 Grenfell and Hunt, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, vol. XII. 67 On laws regulating the deposit and custody of votive offerings in temples see Sokolowski 1955 and 1969. 68 Nowicka 1993, p. 39. 69 Pap.B.G.U. 423, Hunt 1932, pp. 304-07. . 70 Pap. 71 Nowicka 1993, pp. 37-39; Sörries 2003, pp. 59-61 Török 2005, pp. 66-68.; Rondot 2013 p. 33. McCann never referenced the papyrus evidence. 72 Heinen 1991, p. 274. 73 I owe this estimate to Roger Bagnall, who did me the kindness of reading this section. 74 Heinen 1991; pp. 274-75. 75 Oxyrhynchus Papyri, vol. LX.

76 Rondot 2013, fig. 10, p. 44. 77 See the accounts of the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus in Arsinoe in AD 215,Oxy ??? in Hunt 1932, pp. 526-31, no. 404. 78 Herodian, Historia August. IV, 9, 3-8. 79 Beard 1998, p. 257, citing IG II, 2, 1076. Capitolo terzo 1 Dunand 1990, pp. XXX 2 See below, p. XXX 3 Dunand 1979. 4 LIMC XXX. Rondot’s bibliograpy ends up being no more than a list of citations, his study being really the first serious treatment of the painting. Rondot 2013, pp. 84-88, with bibliography on p. 84. 5 Romiopoulou, K.and Brecoulaki, H., “Style and Painting Techniques on the Wall Painting of the ‘Tomb of the Palmettes’ at Lefkadia,” Color in Ancient Greece, M.A. Tiverios and D.S. Tsiafakis, eds., Thessaloniki, 2002, 107-115. This is also described by Brecoulaki in La peinture funéraire de Macédoine employs et fonctions de la couleur IVe-Ire s. av. J.C., vol I, 186, Athens 2006. 6 Excellent illustrations of the different colored undercoats in fresco painting are found in Malaguzzi-Valerj, V., “Ancient Fresco Technique in the Light of Scientific Examination,” Application of Science in Examination of Works of Art, W.J. Young, ed., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1973, pp. 164-169, figs. 7-8. 7 These findings are by Norman Muller who adds that, concerning the medium, with the permission of Dr. Dyfri Williams, Keeper of the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, a loose fragment of green paint overlaying flesh color was removed for media analysis. Richard Newman of the Scientific Department of the Museum of fine Arts, Boston conducted gas chromatography and mass spectrographic analyses of the sample. He reported finding “a poor match to any of the pure proteins (0.74 to glue, 0.60 to egg white, 0.27 to casein). The match was better to a mixture of glue and egg, but still relatively poor (0.86). The paint appears to contain glue, but other sources of amino acids are present.” The paint layer had a dry, granular appearance, with pigment particles poorly bound with medium. (See other paintings tested for medium under Ann Arbor 23975.) Muller’s pigment analysis revealed xxxxx 8 Rondot 2013, pp. 249-51. 9 Vassilika 2006, no. 62, Inv. No. C 3030. 10 In fact Sörries mistakes the dog for a panther, without explanation. Sörries 2003, p. 117. Panthers appear in the Dionysiac textile of Boston-Cleveland-Riggisbert (cf. Weitzmann 1979, no. 124, p. 145). 11 Weitzmann 1979, no. 124, fig. p. 145. See extended stylistic discussion of this textile and the comparable piece in the Riggisberg Museum. Török 2005, pp. 233-37, fig. 77 and pl. XI and XII. 12 DuBourguet 1971, p. 138. 13 Pliny, Natural History XXXV, xxxvi, 6566, Rackham pp. 308-11. 14 Witt 1971, fig. 42. 15 Rondot puzzled long over this iconographic peculiarity of “les yeux exorbites” in Sobek, Heron and Lycourgos in our panel-paintings and he understood it as a carrier of some special “divine power.” Strangely, however, he missed this feature in the Harpocrates-Dionysus. Rondot 2013, pp. 335-36. 16 It is significant that Sobek by himself is not given these bulging eyes, Berlin

15978, but only in his melding with Horus the god of the Dawn does he acquire this special power. 17 Thomas 2009, pp. 63-66. 18 Rondot 2013, pp. 139-40, 25I-53, with fig 41 on p. 250. 19 Book of the Dead, chapter 81. 20 Weitzmann 1979, no. 124, fig. p. 145. 21 LIMC, II, 2, 1364-83. 22 See Kleiner 1981, pp. 512-44. 23 McFadden date? 24 Clement, Exhortations, IV, ANF II, p. 189. 25 Ferguson 1990, s.v. 26 Finney 1994. 27 Baynes « Idolatry. » 28 Clement, Exhortations, ch. vii. quoting Sophocles. 29 Liddell and Scott, s. vv. 30 Clement Exhortations, chap iv. 31 Finney 1994, pp. 40-42. 32 Clement of Alexandria is often cited as proof of a deep aniconism in early Christianity, but this is a modern misinterpretation rooted in the sixteenth century Protestant polemic. When he addresses a Christian audience with practical instructions on daily life, in his Paidagogos, composed around 200, he takes up the problem of images in common use among his coreligionists, namely on signet rings used for sealing documents. The Christian, he says, should avoid pagan gods and erotic subjects on his rings but images capable of a Christian meaning he judges perfectly appropriate. Without intending an exhaustive catalogue, he lists five specific examples: a dove, a fish, a ship, an anchor, or someone fishing; which turn out to be common subjects in the earliest Christian art of the third century. Whether Clement had ever encountered icons of Christ and the saints we do not know; he does not mention them. But his arguments against the pagan gods would not have applied to icons of Christ and the saints which were neither immoral nor deceitful. 33 For the recent bibliography on Isis see Rondot.. 34 Thomas 2001, pp. 27-35. 35 Nowicka 1984. 36 Nowicka 1984, p. 259. 37 Thomas 2001, pp. 33-34, and fig. 56. 38 A second Isis lactans Rondot has tentatively identified in the fragment Tebtynis, no. 229, which shows a goddess with long hair flowing down her shoulders, and with her head lightly inclined to the right. Rondot’s suggestion that this tipping of the head would suit well a composition of Isis nursing is a likely inference on the basis of the images of goddesses in the corpus. Unfortunately the Tebtynis 229 is too worn to yield further pictorial information. 39 Tran Tam Tinh 1975, p. 40 Bolman 2015, pp. 13-16.. 41 Shaw and Nicholson, fig; p. 142. 42 New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1909 09.181.7. Weber 2000, no. 68, pp. 109-10. 43 Witt 1971, p. 240, and pls. 62-66. 44 Rondot 2013, pp. 266-67. 45 Török 2005, p. 274. 46 R. Pagenstecher, AA. 39 (1919), pp. 9-25. 47 Grabar cites the Berlin panels as “pagan triptych” forerunners of Christian triptychs, but he does not discuss the connection. Grabar, Iconography, p. 82 and fig. 217. Anthony Cutler in the ODB article on “Triptych” never raises the issue of the origin of the form. 48 D.L. Thompson, J. Paul Getty Museum Journal, 6-7 (1978-79), pp. 185-92. 49 L.H. Corcoran, Portrait Mummies, 1995. 50 K. Parlasca, Hommages à Fr. Sliva (2000), pp. 293-98.

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51 Sörries, Malibu-Triptychon. Besides the Malibu pair of panels, discussed pp. 3948 and 124-125, Sörries includes among triptychs the Berkeley pair of military gods, panels 6-21384-5 (pp. 51-52), the Berlin pair of military gods17959 (pp. 68-72), the Berlin Harpocrates, which he calls a priest, 19644 (pp. 76-77) and an Oxford panel with an Angel panel 1884.367 (pp. 40-41). 52 Rondot 2013, p. 265, Rondot’s emphasis . 53 Actual measurements by Norman E. Muller. Because museum practice generally regards it sufficient to record the measurement of the width of the bottom, trapezoids often go un-noticed. 54 Etienne 2009, pp. 104-05. For similar pieces in Cairo, see Roeder 1914, nos. 70001-50. 55 On temple worship see Moret 1902; Meeks 1993; O’Connor 2009, pp. 43-61; David, 1981. On the domestic cult of the naiskoi see Aubert 2004, pp. 27-34. 56 The British Museum has a comparable naos (EA 1134 of Ptolemy VII, 145 BC) with similar evidence of locks and hinges (or see the Louvre D29 of Ahmose II, 570-527 BC). 57 Meeks 58 Aubert 2004, pp. 27-34. 59 Etienne 2009, no. 256. 60 Willems 2000, p.273. 61 Paris, Musée du Louvre, E2541-N4532, dated 664-332BC, Etienne 2009, p. 302. 62 Rondot 2013, fig. 37, p. 204. 63 Malaise 2000, pp. 10-11. 64 Rondot 2013, p. 274. Rondot fails to make the same connection for the staff of Isis in the Getty panel, p. 264. 65 Rondot 2013, pp. 261-67. 66 Paton 1916, pp. 420-23. 67 Paton 1916, pp. 68 Paton 1916, pp. 330-31. 69 Prêtre 2002, Greek text p. 199, lines 8-18; Fr. translation p. 215. 70 Nathaniel Jones forthcoming. 71 W. Ehlich, Bild und Rahmen im Altertum, Leipzig, 1954, pp. 165-70. A new example of this Roman practice appears in the representation of a panel with closing wings in the Theater of Herodion (first century AD, 60 km south of Jerusalem); Ehud Netzer, The Architecture of Herod the Great (Jerusalem, 2008). 72 Sande 2004, p. 83. 73 I. Schreibler, “Zu den Bildinhalten der Klapptürbilden Römischer Wanddekorationenen,” RM 105 (1988), pp. 1-20. 74 Weitzmann 1967. To Weitzmann’s evidence must be added a little triptych wing of an Angel from the Fayum that was acquired from the McGregor Collection by the Ashmolean Museum, 1884.367, published in Sörries, No. 31, pp. 140-41, with a date in the 4th or 5th century. The Angel’s purple paludamentum, pearl diadem, and perpendilia, and his gilded halo all suggest rather a 6th century date. 75 For recent re-appraisals of the Weitzman sequencing of the material see Mathews 2006 and Corrigan 2012 76 The panel in question is listed as B40, and is described and illustrated in Weitzmann, loc. cit., p. 67, pl. XCIV. Three other center panels of triptychs are identified and described by Weitzmann: B14, B41, B42 and B45, based on the wide unpainted margins with dowel holes at top and bottom. In addition, Weitzmann identifies 19 triptych doors among the paintings at Mount Sinai: B13, B17, B18, B19-20, B22, B23, B24, B25, B33, B34, B35, B37, B38, B43, B44, B47, B55 and B58. 77 Török 1995, pl. XXIV, no. 142 and p.107. 78 Rondot 2013, p. 44, fig.10. 79 Kraus 1963, no. 508, p. 396.

80 Sande, 2005, p. 87. 81 The marble statuettes of the Good Shepherd (third and fourth centuries) are not cultic but table supports for offerings left at the grave. See Mathews 2008, pp. 48-49 82 Rondot 2013, pp. 301-40. 83 Rostovtzeff 1933, pp. 496 and 501. 84 Sörries 2003, pp. 114-15 and 136-37. 85 Rondot 2003, pp. 96-102 with figures pp. 99-102, and pp.301-08. 86 Rondot, 2013, tables 12-15, pp. 326-30. 87 Rondot 2013, p. 331, n. 73, citing Strabo. 88 Rondot, 2013, pp. 332-33. 89 Witt, 1973, figs. 57, 60,61,62, and 65. 90 Rondot, 2013, pp. 310-11 and fig.54. 91 Rondot, 2013, pp. 309-10 and fig.53. 92 For the description of his dress, see Rondot, 2013, p.97. 93 Frankfurter 1998, p. 36. 94 On the formal organization of the reliefs see Kitzinger 1977, pp. 31-32; on their political meaning see McCormick 1986, 45-50; on their reflection of court ceremonial see Maguire 2008, pp.66-67. 95 Weitzmann 1977, plates 7-10. Capitolo quarto 1 Acts of John chapter 27, in Hennecke 1964, II, p. 220. 2 Lee M. McDonald, “Canon (of scripture),” in Encyclopedia of Early Christinity, ed. Everett Ferguson (NY and London, 1990), pp. 169-73. 3 On the textual history see the introduction by K. Schäferdiek in Hennecke 1965, pp. 188-206. 4 Mansi, XIII, 168D-172C. 5 Lalleman 1998, pp. 252-53. Sande accepts the document as “generally dated to the second century.” Sande 1992, p. 77. Elliott accepts its 2nd c. date and its docetic character. Elliott 1996, pp. 57-59. Klauck accepts its 2nd c. date and comments on its “Christomonism.” Klauck 2008. 6 See the story of a portrait secretly made of St. Theodore of Sykeon, evidently modelled on the Acts of John. Festugière, Theodore, vol. 2, chap. 139. 7 Mathews 1999, p. 161. 8 Sappho, Frag. 81, Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta ed. Edgar Lobel and Denys Page (Oxford , 1955) 55-56. 9 Dio Cassius, Orat. XII, 12, 61. 10 Acts of John, chapter 28, Hennecke 1998, p. 221. 11 See examples of this topos cited in Maguire 1996, pp. 40-49; and more recently and much more fully see Georgia Frank’s exploration of the metaphorical uses of painting in Early Christian sermon literature, “The Image in Tandem: Painting Metaphors and Moral Discourse in Late Antique Christianity,” in The Subjective Eye: Essays in Culture, Religion, and Gender in Honor of Margaret R. Miles,”ed. Richard Valantasis, Princeton Theological Series, 59, pp. 33-47. Unfortunately Frank missed the Acts of John. 12 Acts of John, chapter 29, Hennecke 1998, p. 29. 13 Festugière . 14 Mango 1972, p. 115. 15 Julian, “Letter to a Priest,” 294D, in Wright, Works, II : 310. 16 My effort to draw attention to the Irenaeus documentation has been cordially received by Török 2005, p. 290, (referring to Mathews 2004, p. 166). 17 Bakker 1994, pp. 1-2. 18 Bagnall 1993, p. 281. 19 Mathews 2009-10, pp. 5-16. 20 Scholarship on the founding of St. Peter’s has somewhat modified Richard Krautheimer’s history of the construction of

the basilica. Krautheimer himself added a note on the apse inscription “Iustitiae sedes,” in which he proposed that the construction continued under Constantius 352-61 including the addition of a mosaic apse probably of the the “Traditio legis.” See Krautheimer 1987. New evidence of brick stamps of Constans promted Richard Gem’s comprehensive review of the four mosaic inscriptions in their archaeological setting, demonstrating the remarkable unity of conception of the entire construction, leaving intact Krautheimer’s interpretation of the project as his ex voto offering for his victory of Chrysopolis, and attributing the apse mosaic to Constans 337-50. See Gem 2012. 21 Eusebius, Vita Constantini, III 49; Mango 1972, p. 11. 22 Eusebius, History of the Church, VII, 18. Williamson 1968, p. 302. 23 Sr. Charles Murray questioned the authenticity of the lettter on several grounds but left the problem un-resolved. Murray 1977. More recently Stephen Gero has vindicated its authenticity, Gero, “Letter.” I am citing Eusebius’ text in Mango 1972 pp. 16-18. 24 My translation from PG 20, 1545 25 Frankfurter 1998, p. 22 26 I am putting the relevant passage into English from I.T. Lefort’s French translation of the Boharic version, hoping to convey the rhetoric of the dialogue between the saint and the figures in the icon, Les vies coptes de saint Pachôme, Bibliothèque du Muséon (Louvain, 1943), pp. 134-35. I am indebted to Istvan Perczel of the Central European University, Budapest, for first alerting me to this passage. 27 Muséon, 1943, 134, line 30 and p.135, line 9. 28 Mathews 1999. 29 Rondot 2013, pp.349-52 30 Ware, 1986, 1, 178. 31 Ware, 1986, 2, 198. 32 Capuani, 1999, 195-97. 33 Bordi 2006, 395-405. 34 Zibawi, L’Arte copta, 89. and fig. 95., 35 Krautheimer 1939-77, vol. 5, pp. 93-164; Krautheimer 1986, pp. 87-89. 36 Bordi 2006, 395-405. 37 Mathews 1993, 95-95. 38 Weitzmann, 1979,63, 98 130, 185, 514, 522, 626-27. 39 Rondot, 2013, 349-52. 40 Liverani 2010, 114-19 and figures 67-69. 41 Mathews 1962. 42 Weitzmann 1967, icon B 16, pp. 46-47. 43 See below, p. 44 45 Taft 1986. 46 Ihm 1960; Spieser 1998. Capitolo quinto 1 Cameron 2000. 2 Skipping earlier evidence, Pencheva dates the rise of Patristic interest in Mary to the fourth and fifth centuries and supposes her cult was the result of “imperial interest” in promoting her devotion . Pencheva 2006, pp. 11-12. The same problem appeared in Graef’s survey of Marian doctrine. Graef 1962. 3 Cameron 2001, p. 7. 4 Maunder 2008. Cf. especially Maunder’s own “editorial” essay, pp. ix-xvii. 5 McGuckin 2008. 6 ‘ Fundamental to all study of the Blachernai church is Mango’s thorough review of the textual sources, Mango 1998. Mango’s acceptance of the historicity of the installation of the relic of the maphorion and the mosaics that accompanied it has widely been accepted (see Maguire 2005, p. 186), al-

though his acceptance of Procopius’ ascription of the building of the great church to Justin I has to allow some pre-Justin history of the site. See Schoemaker 2008, p. 72. Three accounts of the “legend” survive, carefully reviewed in Carr 2000, n. 21. I am following Mango’s publication of the account (Mango 1972, pp. 34-35) from a tenth century manuscript of a document probably of the sixth century, Paris Gr. 1447, fol. 257-58 (published by A. Wenger, REB 10 (1952), pp. 54 ff.). This account has the advantage of privileging the cast of characters involved in the mosaics, which remained the primary document of the events, visible throughout the Byzantine era. 7 The legends of Mary’s death and assumption first appear at this time in the fifth century. For an introduction to the texts and various versions see Elliott 2008, especially pp. 66-67. 8 The Veil is referred to here by the more general term peribol , “garment.” I am citing the English translation of Mango 1972, p. 35. Mango refers to the poetic structure of the inscription in 1998, p. 73. 9 For the sixth century document see Wenger’s edition of the tenth century manuscript, Wenger 1952. 10 Mango 1998, p. 71. 11 Leo and Verina’s offering is said to be “after the demise of” Galbius and Candidus. Mango 1972, p. 34. Mango suggests the possible identification of Candidus with the historian of that name, 1998, p. 72. 12 Mango 1972, pp. 34-35. 13 ODB under “Isauria.” Mango distinguishes three saints “Konon,” but popular devotion at this point seems to have run the three together, making the patron of the Isaurians the saint from Nazareth, where the Veil of the Virgin was retrieved. Mango 1998, p.71, n. 43. 14 The mosaic is discussed recently by Maguire, who dates it to the late 460s without comment, 2005, p. 186. 15 Mango 1998, p. 70. 16 Mango 1998, p. 69. Isis’ milk was believed to be magical and was venerated in special vessels. 17 In the sources Carr observes how the inconsistency in the terminology complicates the iconographer’s task. Five different terms are used: peribol , esth s, himation, zon , and omophrion. Carr 2000, n. 21. 18 The text is an excerpt from Theodore the Lector, PG 86,165A, translation Mango 1972, p. 40. On the Hod g tria icon see Angelidi and Papamastorakis 2000. On its role in imperial coronations see pp. 382-85. 19 Rutschowscaya 2000a, p. 220 and pl. 168. 20 Loverdou-Tsigarida 2001, p. 238 and fig. 183;Török 2005, p. 272, and fig. 110; 21 Deckers 2001, p. 268. 22 Liddell and Scott, s.v. 23 Vassilaki 2001, p. 29, pl. 12. 24 Vassilaki 2001, p. 303, pl. 19. 25 On the reproduction process of 1937-38, MMA accession No. 43.48.1, see Teteriatnikov 1998, 61. The layering of Mary’s attire is most legible. See discussion in Cormack 2001, pp. 338-39, in Maria Vassilaki, Mother of God, Representations of the Virgin in Byzantine Art. 26 In the mummy paintings they seemed to prefer to want to display their hair and face completely. In the sculptural mummy masks, however, they are often veiled. Walker 2000, pp. 67 and 84. 27 McGuckin 2001. 28 McGuckin 2008, p. 20, n. 2. 29 Price 2008 p. 89, with earlier literature. 30 McGuckin 2008, p. 10. 31 McGuckin 2008, pp. 4 and 6.

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32 Frankfurter 1998, p. 142, pl.18. 33 McGuckin 2008, p. 9. 34 “Second-century theologians such as Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, describing Mary as the “Second Eve”, did not coin this term in a writer’s garret, but as members of communities in which there would have been discussion and interpretation, all focused on early Gospel narrative tradition.” Maunder 2008, p. 23. 35 Elliott 2008, pp. 57-60. 36 Elliott 2008, p. 65. 37 McGuckin 2008, pp. 11-14. 38 McGuckin 2008, p. 12. 39 Bagnall 1993, p. 251 40 In a preliminary sketch of our project, Muller and I mis-identified the goddess as an Isis appropriating lunar iconography, which we would like now to correct. Ours happened to be the first publication of the Berlin panel. Mathews and Muller 2005. 41 Franz 1988, p. 37, and pl. 25c. The third century date of the house unfortunately does not fix the date of the relief. 42 Measurements: 24.5 x 7 cm. x 5 mm thick, with the upper edge tapered to 3 mm for frame fitting. 43 On the dating see Andaloro and Wolf. 44 Colledge 1976. 45 J.B Ward-Perkins 1978. 46 Mathews 2009-10, p. 10. 47 Witt 1971, pp. 123-27. 48 Witt 1971, pp. 269-81. Witt expressly frames his investigation as an effort to inform Protestant England about the Egyptian origins of their Christianity, pp. 270-71. For recent Isis bibliography see Rondot XXXXX. 49 Bonfante 50 Tran Tam Tinh 1975. 51 Bolman 2005, n. 2. To this number she is now adding the most elegant of all versions of the type from the Red Monastery of Sohag, Bolman forthcoming. 52 Bolman 2005, p. 13. 53 Brock 1977. 54 Mathews 1999, pp. 92-114. 55 Richter 1966. 56 Gazda ????. 57 Paint loss makes the detail illegible in the Alexandria panel, but the Berkeley panel is in excellent condition and is entirely missing the uraeus frieze. 58 The often reproduced watercolor does not agree entirely with the archaeological photograph, both of which are illustrated on the same page in Rondot (figs. 25 and 26, p. 60). 59 Witt, p. ???. 60 Angelidi and Papamastorakis 2001, pp. 375-77. 61 Demangel 1939. 62 Mathews 2005, p. 9. 63 McGuckin 2008, p. 11. 64 Cormack 2005, p. 168. 65 Camille 2000 ; Nelson 2000. Capitolo sesto 1 Nees 1983. 2 Taft remarks, “Historically they [icons] play no role in the ritual of the Byzantine mass and their presence on iconostasis or elsewhere cannot be deemed essential to the celebration of the liturgy of the Great Church.” Taft 1975, 416. 3 See below n. 7. 4 Concerning earlier chancels (without icons) see Mathews 1962, Mathews 1971, Gerstel 2006. 5 Mathews 1971, p. 97. 6 The existence of the Saint Sophia templon icons is acknowledged in passing without discussion in the standard histories of Byzantine art, such as Volbach 1968, p. 49 or Beckwith 1970 p. 46; Lowden exception-

ally devotes a whole a page to it, Lowden 1997. p. 70.. The Saint Sophia templon and its program is never mentioned in the ODB. 7 For the marble pavements and revetments of the church, see Van Nice 1965, pl. 10 and 11. For the templon reconstruction see Xydis 1929, pp. 270-71, pl. A2, and fig. 252; Fobelli 2005, pp. XXX and fig. XXX. 8 Harrison 1986; Harrison 1989. The starting date of St Polyeuktos has been adjusted slightly by Judith McKenzie on the basis of the brick stamps, McKenzie 2007, pp. 332-34. 9 See article by Alexander P. Kazhdan, s.v. in ODB 10 Kruege 2005. 11 Russian Primary Chronicle, in Mathews 1998, p. 98. 12 Harrison 1986; Harrison 1989. 13 On the inscription see the article by Cyril Mango and Ihor Sevcenko, Mango 1961. 14 Gregory, de Gloria Martyrum, PL 71, 79395, translated in Harrison 1986, pp. 8-9. 15 McKenzie 2007, pp. 331-39. 16 By exception, see the brief description in Lowden 1997, p. 70. 17 Harrison, 1986, p. 157. See also Harrison, 1989, pp. 109 and 124. In the latter publication Harrison counts only four Apostles with books (p. 124), but he omits the fragmentary panels catalogued as ix and x on p. 157, figs. 205-206 in Harrison 1986, and the Apostle of fig. 206 clearly carries a book. . 18 Mathews, 1994; Ioannes Deckers, XXX 19 Too little survives of Apostle H to permit classification. 20 See below p. XXX. 21 Durand, Cyprus. 22 Harrison 1989, pp. 126-135 and fig. 167 and 171.These reconstruction drawings were not included in Harrison 1986 and represent further progress in his study of the monument. 23 Mathews 1971, pp. 25-57, 64-66, 96-100. 24 Harrison reports a blue background painted around the inscription; which is clearly visible in the color photograph of Harrison 1989, pl. 31. 25 Thelma K. Thomas, “An Introduction to the Sculpture of Late Roman and Early Byzantine Egypt,” XXX, pp. 54- 64, cf. p. 61. 26 Harrison 1986, pp.238-43. 27 For the St Polyeuktos colonettes see Harrison 1986, 150-52; and Mathews 1971, pp. 54-55, fig. 26 and plate 39. For the chancel plans of the Stoudios Basilca, St Euphemia, and St Sophia see Mathews 1971, pp. 25-7, 64-66, 96-100. 28 Harrison 1986, pp.142-144. 29 See Šev enko s.v. in ODB 30 Kucharek 1971, pp. 234-36. 31 Mansi vol. XIII, 3329E-332E. On the motivation behind this protective legislation see Elsner 2012, p. 380. 32 Durand 1992, p. 115. 33 Van Nice 1965, pl. 10 and 11; Mainstone1988, pp. 270-71 and groundplan pl. A2; and Mathews 1971, pp. 98-100 and plate 82. 34 Van Nice 1965, pl. 29; Mainstone 1988, pp. 232-33, and isometric reconstruction p. 252; Mathews 1971, 82. 35 For the Greek text see Friedländer 1912, and PG XXX 36 Greek Anthology, I, 10, Paton 1916, pp. 6-11. 37 Procopius Buildings I, 1, 65. Dewing 1961,pp. 28-29. 38 Mango 1972, p. 87. 39 Paul the Silentiary, Descriptio Sanctae Sophiae, lines 755-805. 40 Fıratlı 1969. 41 Robin Cormack made this observation

relative to the Sinai icon of the Enthroned Mother of God, Cormack 2005, p. 168. 42 Cormack 2000; and Beat Brenk 43 Greek Anthology, I, 19-22 and 25-26, W.R. Paton 1916, pp. 14-19. 44 Greek Anthology, I, 91, W.R. Paton, 1916, pp. 38-39. 45 Elsner AB 2012. 46 Krueger 2005. 47 Mathews 1971, 98-114. 48 Pelikan 1974, I, 112-3. 49 Isidore of Pelusium, Epistle I, 136, PG 78, 272. On the omophorion see Kucharek 1971, pp. 235-38. See also Šev enko s.v. in ODB. 50 I know of only one parallel, in the Ethiopic Garima Gospels recently re-dated to ca. 600, in which an unidentified Evangelist, possibly St. Mark, wears a rather copious omophorion. 51 Judging from its massive foundation this ambo must have been a much more substantial affair than shown in Sheila Gibson’s reconstruction, Harrison 1989, fig. 167, p. 126; rather one should imagine something more like that in McKenzie’s reconstruction, McKenzie 2007, fig. 552, p. 331. 52 Rowland J. Mainstone, Hagia Sophia: Architecture, Structure, and Liturgy of Justinian’s Great Church (London and New York, 1988), pp. 222-25, and fig. 252. 53 Paul the Silentiary, Descriptio Ambonis, lines 50 and 105, Cyril Mango 1972, pp. 91-92. 54 Lines 243ff., Mango 1972, p. 95. 55 Der Nersessian 1973, p. 385. 56 The great Mother of God exhibition catalogue of 2001 and its accompanying symposium papers omit any discussion of the Polyeuktos templon icons.. Vassilaki 2000 and Vassilaki 2005. 57 Ihm 1960. 58 Durand 2000, pp. 74-77, fig. 27. 59 Vassilaki 2000, and p. 259, no. 201. 60 On the problem of the interpretation see Mathews 1999, pp. 92-114. 61 Pelikan 1974, I, p. 277. 62 Krueger 2005, p. 292. 63 Acts of Peter, 35. 64 Taft 1975, pp. 207-8. 65 Mathews 1971, pp. 155-162; Taft 1975, 149-78. 66 For the history of the term see Lampe 1961, s.v. 67 On the history of this icon see Mathews 1999 p. 2001, correcting the common “imperial” interpretation offered by Belting 1990 pp. 53-57, 163-169. 68 Paul the Silentiary, Description Sanctae Sophiae, lines 806-886. 69 Fobelli, 70 Brubaker. 71 Karanis House C119, Frankfurter 1998, pl. 17. 72 Rodziewicz 1984, pp. 194-227, fig. 226-54; McKenzie 2007, 217-238, fig. 374 and 406. 73 Taft 1986, pp. 26-28, 36-38, 55-56. 74 Taft 1986, p. 38. 75 PG 86, 227376 On Eustratios see entry by Barry Baldwin, ODB, s.v.; also Lexicon Tusculum 145-46. 77 Mango 1972, pp. 133-34. 78 Mango 1972, pp. 40-41. 79 Mango 1972, p. 133, quoting John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History I, 36. Capitolo settimo 1 Bolman, 2006. 2 Bolman 2015.pp. 76-78. 3 Bolman 2006, pp. 87-88. 4 Bowen 2002, pp. 65-85; Bolman 2006, pp. 77-78. 5 See the Wadi Natrun Syrian Monastery sanctuary doors, Bolman 2006, p. 92, fig. 14.

6 Kötzsche 2004, p. 209; see Török 2005, fig. XXIV.. 7 For examples of door construction see the pieces in the Louvre, panel no. 350, Confronted Equestrian Saints and no. 540, the Door of Hegoumenos Apa Tau, no. 540, both of the 7th or 8th century from Bawit, Rutschowscaya 1986, pp. 106 and 156. 8 Stiegmann 2001, p. 137. 9 Rondot 2013, pp. 312-13, fig. 55. 10 A military guard leads a dromedary but makes no gesture in the mosaic pavement of the Synagogue of Mount Nebo in the Jordan, Steven Fine. 11 Rutshowskaya has published on this piece three times: Rutschawscaya, 1986, no. 352 p. 107; 2000a, and 2000b. 12 Der Nersessian 1944-45, p. 380. Tourian line 13 See the roundel of the Annunciation and the Visitation in the Victoria and Albert Museum, in Rutschowscaya 2000a; fig. 167. It is possible too that the awkwardness is due to the fact that the subject of a woman at work has no tradition in the Classical repertoire. 14 Schiller,1972, I, figs. 68-73. 15 Rutschowscaya, 2000a, fig.167. 16 For the inscription see Lazaridou 2012, p. 171, entry by A. Drandaki. 17 I am indebted to Paul Dilley for reading the Coptic inscription for me. 18 Bagnall 1993, pp. 235-60. 19 There is no trace of the word « twofold » which A. Drandaki inserts here in her catalogue entry, “. . remember him before God twofold.” Lazaridou 2012, p. 171. 20 Durand 1992, p. 144, no. 98. 21 Durand 1992, p. 145, no. 99. 22 Evans and Ratliff 2012. 23 Bolman 2002. 24 For the state of the monument before the arrival of Bolman’s team see Zibawi 2003, pp. 97-101; for the progress of the cleaning of the murals see Bolman 2004, 2006, and 2007.. 25 Concerning the differences of opinion on public access to the restored monument, see Bolman. 26 Shepherd 1969. 27 The orientation of the decoration of the great “lobes” is best appreciated in Evans and Ratliff 2012, p. 36, fig. 13. 28 Effenberger-Severin 1992, cat. 84; Török 2005, p. 301. 29 Török wants to place these icons in the class of official government portraiture, but the book and the omophorion are certainly not secular insignia. Török 2005, p. 301. 30 That visions deserved special consideration in Christian iconography Grabar had realized very well. His investigation of the subject, however, started with the misapprehension that the Ezekiel vision was a presentation of God the Father, contrary to Christian exegesis that always explained it as a vision of the Incarnation of the Son. Grabar 1968. 31 Liddell and Scott, s.v. 32 Elsner 2012, p. 376. 33 Conticello 2000 34 This is published as three Discorces, with appendices of notes, of which the first two are certainly authentic and represent two “editions” of the same work, but the third, attested in a single ms. of the thirteenth century takes the discussion of icons to new ground (arguing in chapter 26, for example, that man’s Eucharistic sharing in the Divine Nature makes him superior to angels). The critical edition by B. Kotter publishes them in synoptic form in three columns which destroys the coherence of the separate documents. B. Kotter Die Schriften des Iohannes von Damaskos, Pa-

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tristiche Text und Studien 17 Contra imaginum calumniatores orations tres (Berlin, 1975). We are using the English translation of David Anderson, On the Divine Images by St. John of Damascus (Crestwood, NY, 1980). Cf. also Andrew Louth, Three Treatises on the Divine Images by John of Damascus (Crestwood, NY, 2003). 35 Of the Divine Images, I, 9, Anderson 1980 p. 19. 36 Of the Divine Images, I ,10, Anderson 1980, p. 19. 37 Forn the florilegia tradition of the icon defense see the treatise of Moschus in Alexakis 1998. 38 Der Nersessian 1944-45, p. 381 and 384. For Armenian text see Tourian 1927; lines 95-105 and 281-90. 39 Zibawi 2003, pp. 101-04. 40 The Letters have been translated into English by Nina G. Garsoïan, 1999. 41 Der Nersessian 1944-45, p. 401, n. 130. 42 Alexander 1955; Van Esbroeck; Schmidt. 43 Of the Divine Images, I, 16, Anderson 1980, pp. 23-26. 44 Lines 319-39. 45 I am grateful to the Deutsche Arbeitsgemeinschaft zur Förderung Byzantinischer Studien for the invitation to present this chapter at their meeting in Leipzig, 25 February 2011. 46 For recent treatment of the Stoglav see Tarasov 2002. For Trent see Mansi, XXXIII, 171ff. 47 Gero 1977. Gero unfairly credits Baynes for his own negative opinion of Nicaea II, whereas Baynes had actually expressed a real admiration for the accomplishment of the Council. It was the later rigidity of Orthodoxy that Baynes criticized: “By the recognition of a progressive revelation the Greek Church had freed itself from the dead hand of a Semitic prohibition: it had maintained a place in worship for those emotions which had inspired the Greek in the defence of his pagan gods. But during the long struggle the passionate loyalty to the tradition of the fathers had so possessed the soul of the Greek Church that after the victory of the images, after the celebration of the festival of re-established orthodoxy, it ceased to believe in a progressive revelation of truth, in a tradition which should consciously adapt itself to present needs as and when fresh crises called for restatements of Christian truth.” Baynes 1960, p. 141. 48 Hennephhof 1969. 49 Mango 1972, pp.165-69. 50 “For our purposes the loyalty to images expressed in what was believed by the people, the defence of images expressed in what was taught by the theologians, and the victory of the images expressed in what was confessed by the orthodox councils should all be treated together.” Pelikan 1974, vol. 2, p. 117. 51 Meyendorff 1974; Meyencorff 1975. 52 Belting 1994, pp. 144-153, and Appendix, text 8, 505-07. 53 Auzépy 1987a ; Auzépy A987b ; Uphus 2004. 54 Walter 1971; Walter 1993. 55 Cross 1974, s.v.^56 Mango 1972, p. 139, citing Mansi, XIII, 68.^57In this connection one may recognize a widespread confusion in Antiquity about what constituted medicine, for the same Greek word pharmakon meant both medicine and poison. This problem is compounded in Armenian in which the same word deł meant both medicine and pigments, leading the Armenian theologian Vrt’anes Kertoł to argue that the ingredients of icon painting had medicinal properties.

Der Nersessian 1973, I, p. 387. « Une apologie des images du septième siècle, » Études Byzantines et Arméniennes, 2 vols. (Louvain, 1973), I, 387. 58 Liddell and Scott, s.v.^59 Cf. Lampe s.v. Also Uphus 2004. 60 Troullo, Mansi, XI, 977-980 ; Council of 754, Mansi, XIII, 328D.^61 Herbert Weir Smyth, Greek Grammar, rev.ed. (Cambridge Mass. 1973), nos. 1869-70, 1996-99.^62 Charles J. Hefele, A History of the Councils of the Church, tr. William R. Clark (Edinburgh, 1896), 374.^63 Daniel J. Sahas, Icon and Logos, Sources in Eighth-Century Iconoclasm (Toronto, 1986) Icon and Logos, p. 179, emphasis added.^64 Smyth, Greek Grammar, nos. 2001-07.^65 Auzépy, « Horos, » p. 33, emphasis added.^66 The Latin version can be found alongside the Greek in Mansi XIII, 373-380 ).^67 Oxford Latin Dictionary, s .v.^68 Tanner, Decrees, I, p. 136, the translator for Nicaea II is Joseph P. Munitiz. Belting uses this translation in his “Appendix: Texts on the History and Use of Images and Relics.” Belting, Image and Likeness, pp. 505-507.^69 Hans Belting, Bild und Kult, Eine Geschichte der Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst (Munich, 1990, 561-64.^70 J. Rudhardt, Notions fondamentales de la pensée religieuse et actes constitutifs du culte dans la Grèce classique, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1992), pp. 214-218. See also the Oxford Classical Dictionary under “Votive Offerings.” 71 Oxford Classical Dictionary, under “Consecratio.” 72 Oxford Classical Dictionary, under “Dedicatio.” 73 Rouse, Greek Votive Offerings, p. 357. 74 John of Damascus, Apology, I, 24 and II, 1; Kotter 1969-88, vol. 3, pp.113-115; Anderson 1980, pp. 32 and 63-64; Louth 2003, p. 38. 75 John of Damascus, Apology, II, 11, Anderson 1980, p. 58. Kotter after having followed the paragraphing of Migne throughout inexplicably re-numbers this passage here, tacking it on to the end of II, 10; but there is a clear sense break at the beginning of the preceding sentence signalled by ei de when John takes up three kinds of un-allowable images. Kotter 1869-88, vol. 3, 99-100. Anderson follows the older numbering, Louth the Kotter numbering. Louth 2003, p. 38. ^76 Smyth, Greek Grammar, nos. 1991-1999.^77 Auzèpy 1987a, pp. 162-164. ^78 Pelikan 1974, vol. 2, pp. 118-119.^79 Liddell and Scott 1968, s.vv.^80 Liddell and Scott 1968, s.v.^ (Endnotes) 1 Bolman, 2006. 2 Bolman 2015.pp. 76-78. 3 Bolman 2006, pp. 87-88. 4 Bowen 2002, pp. 65-85; Bolman 2006, pp. 77-78. 5 See the Wadi Natrun Syrian Monastery sanctuary doors, Bolman 2006, p. 92, fig. 14. 6 Kötzsche 2004, p. 209; see Török 2005, fig. XXIV.. 7 For examples of door construction see the pieces in the Louvre, panel no. 350, Confronted Equestrian Saints and no. 540, the Door of Hegoumenos Apa Tau, no. 540, both of the 7th or 8th century from Bawit, Rutschowscaya 1986, pp. 106 and 156. 8 Stiegmann 2001, p. 137. 9 Rondot 2013, pp. 312-13, fig. 55. 10 A military guard leads a dromedary but makes no gesture in the mosaic pavement of the Synagogue of Mount Nebo in the Jordan, Steven Fine. 11 Rutshowskaya has published on this piece

three times: Rutschawscaya, 1986, no. 352 p. 107; 2000a, and 2000b. 12 Der Nersessian 1944-45, p. 380. Tourian line 13 See the roundel of the Annunciation and the Visitation in the Victoria and Albert Museum, in Rutschowscaya 2000a; fig. 167. It is possible too that the awkwardness is due to the fact that the subject of a woman at work has no tradition in the Classical repertoire. 14 Schiller,1972, I, figs. 68-73. 15 Rutschowscaya, 2000a, fig.167. 16For the inscription see Lazaridou 2012, p. 171, entry by A. Drandaki. 17 I am indebted to Paul Dilley for reading the Coptic inscription for me. 18 Bagnall 1993, pp. 235-60. 19 There is no trace of the word « twofold » which A. Drandaki inserts here in her catalogue entry, “. . remember him before God twofold.” Lazaridou 2012, p. 171. 20 Durand 1992, p. 144, no. 98. 21 Durand 1992, p. 145, no. 99. 22 Evans and Ratliff 2012. 23 Bolman 2002. 24 For the state of the monument before the arrival of Bolman’s team see Zibawi 2003, pp. 97-101; for the progress of the cleaning of the murals see Bolman 2004, 2006, and 2007.. 25 Concerning the differences of opinion on public access to the restored monument, see Bolman. 26 Shepherd 1969. 27 The orientation of the decoration of the great “lobes” is best appreciated in Evans and Ratliff 2012, p. 36, fig. 13. 28 Effenberger-Severin 1992, cat. 84; Török 2005, p. 301. 29 Török wants to place these icons in the class of official government portraiture, but the book and the omophorion are certainly not secular insignia. Török 2005, p. 301. 30 That visions deserved special consideration in Christian iconography Grabar had realized very well. His investigation of the subject, however, started with the misapprehension that the Ezekiel vision was a presentation of God the Father, contrary to Christian exegesis that always explained it as a vision of the Incarnation of the Son. Grabar 1968. 31 Liddell and Scott, s.v. 32 Elsner 2012, p. 376. 33 Conticello 2000 34 This is published as three Discorces, with appendices of notes, of which the first two are certainly authentic and represent two “editions” of the same work, but the third, attested in a single ms. of the thirteenth century takes the discussion of icons to new ground (arguing in chapter 26, for example, that man’s Eucharistic sharing in the Divine Nature makes him superior to angels). The critical edition by B. Kotter publishes them in synoptic form in three columns which destroys the coherence of the separate documents. B. Kotter Die Schriften des Iohannes von Damaskos, Patristiche Text und Studien 17 Contra imaginum calumniatores orations tres (Berlin, 1975). We are using the English translation of David Anderson, On the Divine Images by St. John of Damascus (Crestwood, NY, 1980). Cf. also Andrew Louth, Three Treatises on the Divine Images by John of Damascus (Crestwood, NY, 2003). 35 Of the Divine Images, I, 9, Anderson 1980 p. 19. 36 Of the Divine Images, I ,10, Anderson 1980, p. 19. 37 Forn the florilegia tradition of the icon defense see the treatise of Moschus in Alexakis 1998.

38 Der Nersessian 1944-45, p. 381 and 384. For Armenian text see Tourian 1927; lines 95-105 and 281-90. 39 Zibawi 2003, pp. 101-04. 40 The Letters have been translated into English by Nina G. Garsoïan, 1999. 41 Der Nersessian 1944-45, p. 401, n. 130. 42 Alexander 1955; Van Esbroeck; Schmidt. 43 Of the Divine Images, I, 16, Anderson 1980, pp. 23-26. 44 Lines 319-39. 45 I am grateful to the Deutsche Arbeitsgemeinschaft zur Förderung Byzantinischer Studien for the invitation to present this chapter at their meeting in Leipzig, 25 February 2011.^46 For recent treatment of the Stoglav see Tarasov 2002. For Trent see Mansi, XXXIII, 171ff. 47 Gero 1977. Gero unfairly credits Baynes for his own negative opinion of Nicaea II, whereas Baynes had actually expressed a real admiration for the accomplishment of the Council. It was the later rigidity of Orthodoxy that Baynes criticized: “By the recognition of a progressive revelation the Greek Church had freed itself from the dead hand of a Semitic prohibition: it had maintained a place in worship for those emotions which had inspired the Greek in the defence of his pagan gods. But during the long struggle the passionate loyalty to the tradition of the fathers had so possessed the soul of the Greek Church that after the victory of the images, after the celebration of the festival of re-established orthodoxy, it ceased to believe in a progressive revelation of truth, in a tradition which should consciously adapt itself to present needs as and when fresh crises called for restatements of Christian truth.” Baynes 1960, p. 141. 48 Hennephhof 1969. 49 Mango 1972, pp.165-69. 50 “For our purposes the loyalty to images expressed in what was believed by the people, the defence of images expressed in what was taught by the theologians, and the victory of the images expressed in what was confessed by the orthodox councils should all be treated together.” Pelikan 1974, vol. 2, p. 117. 51 Meyendorff 1974; Meyencorff 1975. 52 Belting 1994, pp. 144-153, and Appendix, text 8, 505-07. 53 Auzépy 1987a ; Auzépy A987b ; Uphus 2004. 54 Walter 1971; Walter 1993. 55 Cross 1974, s.v.^56 Mango 1972, p. 139, citing Mansi, XIII, 68.^57 In this connection one may recognize a widespread confusion in Antiquity about what constituted medicine, for the same Greek word pharmakon meant both medicine and poison. This problem is compounded in Armenian in which the same word deł meant both medicine and pigments, leading the Armenian theologian Vrt’anes Kertoł to argue that the ingredients of icon painting had medicinal properties. Der Nersessian 1973, I, p. 387. « Une apologie des images du septième siècle, » Études Byzantines et Arméniennes, 2 vols. (Louvain, 1973), I, 387. 58 Liddell and Scott, s.v.^59 Cf. Lampe s.v. Also Uphus 2004. 60 Troullo, Mansi, XI, 977-980 ; Council of 754, Mansi, XIII, 328D.^61 Herbert Weir Smyth, Greek Grammar, rev.ed. (Cambridge Mass. 1973), nos. 1869-70, 1996-99.^62 Charles J. Hefele, A History of the Councils of the Church, tr. William R. Clark (Edinburgh, 1896), 374.^63 Daniel J. Sahas, Icon and Logos, Sources in Eighth-Century Iconoclasm (Toronto, 1986) Icon and Logos, p. 179, emphasis

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added.^64 Smyth, Greek Grammar, nos. 2001-07.^65 Auzépy, « Horos, » p. 33, emphasis added.^66 The Latin version can be found alongside the Greek in Mansi XIII, 373-380 ).^67 Oxford Latin Dictionary, s .v.^68 Tanner, Decrees, I, p. 136, the translator for Nicaea II is Joseph P. Munitiz. Belting uses this translation in his “Appendix: Texts on the History and Use of Images and Relics.” Belting, Image and Likeness, pp. 505-507.^69 Hans Belting, Bild und Kult, Eine Geschichte der Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst (Munich, 1990, 561-64.^70 J. Rudhardt, Notions fondamentales de la pensée religieuse et actes constitutifs du culte dans la Grèce classique, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1992), pp. 214-218. See also the Oxford Classical Dictionary under “Votive Offerings.”^71 Oxford Classical Dictionary, under “Consecratio.” ^72 Oxford Classical Dictionary, under “Dedicatio.”^73 Rouse, Greek Votive Offerings, p. 357.^74 John of Damascus, Apology, I, 24 and II, 1; Kotter 1969-88, vol. 3, pp.113-115; Anderson 1980, pp. 32 and 63-64; Louth 2003, p. 38. 75 John of Damascus, Apology, II, 11, Anderson 1980, p. 58. Kotter after having followed the paragraphing of Migne throughout inexplicably re-numbers this passage here, tacking it on to the end of II, 10; but there is a clear sense break at the beginning of the preceding sentence signalled by ei de when John takes up three kinds of un-allowable images. Kotter 1869-88, vol. 3, 99-100. Anderson follows the older numbering, Louth the Kotter numbering. Louth 2003, p. 38. ^76 Smyth, Greek Grammar, nos. 1991-1999.^77 Auzèpy 1987a, pp. 162-164. ^78 Pelikan 1974, vol. 2, pp. 118-119.^79 Liddell and Scott 1968, s.vv.^80 Liddell and Scott 1968, s.v. CAPITOLO OTTAVO 1 Demus 1976, pp. 22-26. On the enumeration and liturgical distinctions of Feasts see intry by Taft in ODB, s.v. 2 The church built by Stylianus Zaoutzas in Constantinople (886-93) was described by his son-in-law the emperor Leo VI in his Sermon 34, in Mango 1972, pp. 203-05. Eleven or twelve scenes are described. 3 A lovely example of a Z-shaped bridle of 3rd-5th century, with gold leaf decoration, exists in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; cf Harper, Royal Hunter 81 no. 27. For Sassanian equestrian coiffure see: Harper, Royal Hunter 28 no. 1. 4 A fresco from Bawit shows St Sisinnios triumphing over the personified demon Alvasdria and a congregation of threatening creatures. Another Egyptian equestrian, St Merkurios, appears on a Sinai icon. One ninth-century pair of triptych wings at Sinai show the equestrian saints George and Theodore spearing respectively a serpent and a heretic. The pintels in the corners fitted these panels as wings of a triptych. 5 One can find this myth in various forms in the Apocalypse of Peter, the Second Treatise of the Great Seth, Acts of John. 6 Der Nersessian 1978, p. 53, n. 27. The ampoullae were little souvenir bottles (diameter 7-10 cm.), in which pilgrims received holy oil from the shrines of Jerusalem. Closest to the Dvin Crucifixion is ampoulla 10 in which the bust image of an older, bearded Christ floats above an empty cross made of palm trunks. Unlike the Dvin relief, the ampoulla includes numerous auxiliary figures: Mary and John, the crucified thieves, the sun in eclipse, a pair of worshippers at the cross. The

Dvin Crucifixion remains a unique statement of Christ’s superiority to suffering and death. The suffering human nature is entirely absent. 7 Kartsonis 1986, pp. 40-67. 8 For the Anastasis, cf. Kartsonis 1986. 9 On the nude body of Christ see Mathews 1998, pp. 118-27. 10 For translation of the document see Mango 1972, pp. 203-05. 11 Mango 1962, pp. 29-35. 12 Herrin 2003. 13 BM M&LA 1978 5-2. 10. Cf. Eastmond 2001, pp. 400-01. 14 Erevan, Museum of Armenian History, no. 2604-3; Der Nersessian 1978, p. 52 and fig. 33; Durand, Rapti, Giovannoni 2007, no. 21, p. 93. 15Walker 2000, 36.^16 Brekoulaki 2012.^17 Brecoulaki 2006, 2v.^18 H. Brecoulaki 2010. 19 Walker, loc. cit., 124-127. The paintings were Heron from Providence (59.030), Nemesis from Ann Arbor (88723), and Enthroned Figure from Ann Arbor (88617am).^20 Ramer 1979, p. 6. The painting in question was UC 14768, and not the focus of the article (UC 19611), which was painted in a saponified wax medium. In identifying the egg binder, Ramer examined the lipid portion: “the fatty acid pattern (low acetate) indicates the presence of nondrying lipids typical of egg.”^21 Freccero 2000.^22 Harris, J.R., Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries, London 1962.^23 Plester 1956, p. 111.^24 Newman, R and

Halpine, S., “The binding media of ancient Egyptian painting,” Colour and Painting in Ancient Egypt, W.V. Davies, ed., London 2001, 22-29.^25 See n.2, sopra.^26 Johnson, Meryl and Packard, Elizabeth, “Methods used for the Identification of Binding Media in Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries,” Studies in Conservation, 16 (1971), 145-164. ^27 Halpine, S., “Amino acid analysis of proteinaceous media from Cosimo Tura’s ‘The Annunciation with Saint Francis and Saint Louis of Toulouse’”, Studies in Conservation 87 (1992), 22-38.^28 Halpine, S., “An Investigation of Artist’s Materials Using Amino Acid Analysis: Introduction of the One-Hour Extraction Method,” Conservation Research 1995, 29-69.^29 In all, fifteen paintings were identified for medium, three of these being identified by the present owners: the Saqqara panel in the British Museum, and one of the doors in the Getty Museum: Serapis 74AP21.^30 Joy Mazurek, M. Svoboda, et.al., « Characterization of Binding Media in Egyptian Romano Portraits using Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbant Assay and Mass Spectometry, » e-Preservation Sciences, 11 (2014), 76-83. 31 Mayer 1981, pp. pp. 212-22. 32 Doxiadis 1997 = Euphrosyne Doxiadis, “Technique,” in Susan Walker, Ancient Faces: Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt, Susan Walker and Morris Bierbrier, eds., (London), 21-22.^33 K. Innemée, “Encaustic Painting in Egypt,” L’apport de l’Egypte

a l’histoire des techniques, B.Mathieu, et.al. eds., Cairo: Institut Francais d’Archéologie Orientale, c. 2006, 133-141. 34 Brecoulaki (as in n.4), 103.^35 K. Weitzmann, The Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai, The Icons, Princeton, 1976.^36 P. Amato, De Vera Effigie Mariae: Antiche Icone Romain, Rome 1988.^37 The Italian paintings of the National Gallery in London have been studied in greater art historical and technical depth than probably any other major public collection, with analysis by gas chromatography and the results have been published regularly in the National Gallery Technical Bulletin since 1977. The early Italian paintings studied invariably tested positive for egg tempera.^38 Muller, ‘Letter to the Editors,’ Studies in Conservation 48/1 (2003) 72. 39 Weitzmann (loc.cit., n19, 14) writes “Close to inner edge of the nimbus there is a line of alternating four-petalled and eight-petalled punched rosettes. This and the nimbi of the Kiev Virgin (no.B2) and the Sinai Virgin (no. B3) appear to be the earliest known examples of the punching technique.”^40 Belting 1994, p. 407. 41 Gordon 2011, pp. 32-41; Di Nepi 2009; pp. 13 and 52. 42 Flora 43 Gordon 2011, pp. 32-37. 44 The Karanis Isis Lactans of house B50, with the Tebtunis fragment 227, and the Berkeley 6.21386 are the best examples of thrones in our corpus, to which must be added the thrones in the Karanis Chapel

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of the Syncretic Gods. 45 On the Sinai Crucifixion icons see Corrigan 2012. 46 On the Shapiro debate see Gordon 2011, pp. 34-36. 47 Gordon 2011, p. 38 and fig. 9. 48 Gordon 2011, p. 37 and fig. 6. 49 Vassilaki 2000, no. 33. 50 Belting 1994, p. 354. 51 Belting ibid. Belting uses the word “votive” here and elsewhere refers to a personal, non-liturgical use of images, which is not its meaning in the Greek sources that he cites for documentation. The original Greek meaning of anath mata,“votive offerings” never enters into Belting’s discussion, though in his Appendix he cites documents that include the word. 52 Belting 1994, pp. 225-33, and Appendix texts 20-24, pp. 512-22. 53 Gardner 2011, p. 14, n. 45. I am indebted to Julian Gardner for calling this documentation to my attention. 54 The history of the introduction of incense into Christian cult has been completely re-written in a series of studies by Béatrice Caseau, starting with Constantine’s incense altars in the Lateran Basilica. ^

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ADDITIONAL REF. FOR BIBLIO: Alston 2002 = Richard Alston, The City in Roman and Byzantine Egypt (London) Botti 1959 = Giuseppe Botti, La Glorficazione di Sobk e del’ Fayoum in un papiro ieratico da Tebtynis, Enjar Munksgaard Meeks and Meeks 1997=Dimitri Meeks and Christine Favard-Meeks, La Vie quotidian des dieux Egyptiens (Paris). Rostovtzeff and Baur 1931 = M.I. Rostovtweff and P.V.C. Baur, “Victory on a Painted Panel, Found at Dura,” in Excavations at Dura-Europos Conducted by Yale University and the French Academy of Inscriptions and Letters: Preliminary Report of Second Season of Work1928-29, ed Baur and Rostovtzeff (New Haven), pp. 181-93. Whitehouse 2015 = Helen Whitehouse, Please put this note in English “Images of the Invincible Gods : Piety and Panel Painting in Roman Egypt,” Biblioteca Orientalis, LXX, 1-2 (2015), pp. 5-20 Yoyotte 1987-88 = J. Yoyotte, “Hérodote et le ‘Livre du Fayoum,’ la crue du Nil recyclée.” Revue de la Societé Ernest Renan,37 (198788) pp. 53-66.

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