Ptolemaic Royal Sculpture from Egypt : the Greek and Egyptian Traditions and Their Interaction
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This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Ptolemaic royal sculpture from Egypt : the Greek and Egyptian traditions and their interaction. Ashton, Sally-Ann The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 23. Sep. 2021 Ptolemaic Royal Sculpture from Egypt: the Greek and Egyptian Traditions and their Interaction Sally-Ann Ashton King's College London Submitted for the examination of the degree of Ph.D May 1999 (LONDON) 2 Abstract Volume I of this thesis is concerned with the relationship and development of the Greek and Egyptian-style Ptolemaic royal sculpture from Egypt. After an introductory outline of previous scholarship, the historical and religious backgrounds to the presentation of the royal image are surveyed. Chapter 2 considers the chronology and identification of royal sculptures in the Hellenistic style, and the influence of Egyptian art on the Greek-style representations. Chapter 3 examines the iconographic and stylistic developments of Egyptian-style Ptolemaic royal sculpture in respect to earlier Egyptian royal portraiture; and the emergence of representations of royal women. Chapter 4 explores the interaction between Greek and Egyptian elements on Hellenistic representations that are manufactured in hard stones, and Egyptian sculptures which exhibit Greek portrait features. The Egyptian material covers statues of Ptolemaic royal women with naturalistic coiffures and the development and function of Egyptian-style representations of male rulers with Greek portrait features. Chapter 5 considers a group of sculptures representing royal women with Greek elements, which are generally believed to associate the queens with the goddess Isis. I place the evidence within a chronological sequence, referring to the purely Egyptian-style portraits that are discussed in Chapter 3, and then examine the function and origins of this type of image. Chapter 6 explores the early Ptolemaic rulers' relationship to and patronage of the cult of Sarapis. Concentrating on the archaeological evidence from Alexandria and Memphis, I consider the extent to which the image of Sarapis was Hellenised as a result of royal policy. Finally, Chapter 7 amalgamates points of interest that have arisen from the earlier chapters. Volume II is a catalogue of 165 sculptures some hitherto unpublished. 3 Preface I am extremely grateful to my two supervisors Dr. Jane Rowlandson and Professor Geoffrey Waywell, who have been very supportive throughout my research and have both been a great help and source of inspiration. I am also very grateful to Professor John Tait for helping me with the Egyptian language and for discussing the inscriptions that are mentioned in this thesis. In addition, with regard to the Egyptian material, I would like to thank Jack. A. Josephson (New York) for discussing the dates of key pieces. I would like to also take the opportunity to thank Mr. Richard Fa.zzini for granting me permission to use the Corpus of Late Egyptian Sculpture at the Brooklyn Museum of Art on several occasions. Also, Dr. Dorothea Arnold and Dr. James Allen of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York for their help during my visit to the Egyptian department; and Dr. Marc. Etienne of the department of Egyptian Antiquities, Musée du Louvre. With regard to the Hellenistic material, I would like to thank Dr. Susan Walker (British Museum) for her comments on my work and also for her support and enthusiasm. I am also extremely grateful to Dr. Don Bailey (British Museum) for several photographs and for sharing his knowledge of objects and sites throughout Egypt. I would also like to thank Dr. Mike Traçfor discussing the possible identities of the Memphis Sarapieion group with me. I would like to thank Dr. Dimitris Plantzos for allowing me to see the proofs of his book on Hellenistic Cameos before publication and for allowing me to consult his photographs of the Edfu Sealings from the Allard-Pierson Museum Amsterdam. Also with regard to the sealings in the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto I would like to thank Ms. Beth Knox for her help and patience during my visit. I would also like to thank Dr. Mervat Self El-Din from the Greco-Roman Museum, Alexandria for all of her help over the last three years both during my work at the Museum and in answering queries throughout this period. 4 I would also like to thank my family and friends for their support throughout my research, most especially my parents and my grandmother. I am also extremely grateful to Donald Spanel for his help, academic advice and friendship, particularly over the past year. Finally, I am indebted to Ian Blair, whose moral support has helped me through my research and the writing up of my thesis. Photographic Permissions In the catalogue for this thesis, details of the dimensions, medium, and current location derive either from personal examination, publications, correspondence, or from the Corpus of Late Egyptian Sculpture, which consists of notes and photographs compiled by the late Bernard V. Bothmer and now deposited in the Department of Egyptian, Classical, and Ancient Middle Eastern Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art. All undocumented references to Bothmer's notes indicate information contained in the CLES notebooks. Except where noted, photographic permissions have been obtained from the individual museums and collections and are reproduced courtesy of their departments. 5 Contents: Volume I Title page 1 Abstract 2 Preface 3 Table of Contents 5 Abbreviations 14 Chapter 1: Introduction Section 1.1 Previous Scholarship. 19 Section 1.2 Aims of the thesis. 25 Section 1.3 The historical context for the development of royal portraiture. 27 Section 1.4 Royal cults. 30 Section 1.5 Priests and Nationalism. 36 Chapter 2: Greek-style portraiture from Ptolemaic Egypt Section 2.1 Introduction. 38 Section 2.2 Male rulers in the third century BC. 42 Section 2.3 Ptolemy V. 49 Section 2.4 Ptolemy VI. 49 Section 2.5 Ptolemies VIII, IX and X. 49 Section 2.6 Ptolemy XII. 54 Section 2.7 Ptolemies XIII, XIV and XV. 55 Section 2.8 Berenike I and Arsinoe II 55 Section 2.9 Berenike II. 59 Section 2.10 Arsinoe III. 62 Section 2.11 Second century queens. 64 Section 2.12 Cleopatra VII. 66 Section 2.13 The influence of Egyptian art on the Hellenistic royal image. 68 Section 2.14 Conclusion. 69 6 Chapter 3: Evidence for and function of Egyptian-style royal representations Section 3.1 Pre-Ptolemaic Egyptian-style royal portraiture. 70 Section 3.2 Evidence for Egyptian-style Ptolemaic royal representations. 73 Section 3.3 Third century BC male rulers. 75 Section 3.4 Second to first century BC male rulers. 83 Section 3.5 Third century BC queens. 86 Section 3.6 Second century BC queens. 88 Section 3.7 First century BC queens. 91 Section 3.8 Conclusion. 94 Chapter 4: The interaction between Greek and Egyptian elements on Ptolemaic royal portraiture Section 4.1 Introduction 95 Section 4.2 Greek-style portraits manufactured in Egyptian hard stones 98 Section 4.3 Egyptian-style portraits of Ptolemaic queens with Greek 100 features. Section 4.4 Egyptian-style statues of male rulers with Greek portrait 104 features. Section 4.5 Function. 116 Section 4.6 Conclusion. 122 Chapter 5: Representations of Isis, Egypt and the Ptolemaic queens Section 5.1 Introduction. 123 Section 5.2 Chronology and identification. 126 Section 5.3 Origins. 137 Section 5.4 Function of the Egyptian statues. 140 Section 5.5 Hellenistic and Roman Isis. 142 Section 5.6 Conclusion. 146 Chapter 6: Sarapis and the royal house Section 6.1 Introduction and origins of Sarapis. 147 Section 6.2 Ptolemaic Sarapis. 149 7 Section 6.3 Memphis. 150 Section 6.4 The hemicycle. 154 Section 6.5 The dromos. 164 Section 6.6 Discussion and interpretation. 167 Section 6.7 The Sarapieion at Alexandria. 172 Section 6.8 Conclusion. 179 Chapter 7: Conclusions Section 7.1 Introduction. 182 Section 7.2 The Egyptian-style representations of male rulers. 184 Section 7.3 The Egyptian-style representations of royal women. 185 Section 7.4 Archaism. 189 Section 7.5 Egyptian influence on Greek sculpture. 191 Section 7.6 Conclusion. 193 Appendix I Sculpture 195 Appendix II Non-Sculpture 200 Bibliography 204 List of Illustrations Table 1 Statues representing Ptolemaic queens, Chapter 5. 125 Figure 1 Plan of the Sarapieion, Memphis. 153 After Lauer and Picard (1955). Figure 2 Suggested reconstruction of the hemicycle, Memphis. 155 After Lauer and Picard (1955). Figure 3 Suggested reconstruction of the hemicycle, Memphis. 155 After Pietrzykowski (1976). Figure 4 Suggested reconstruction of the hemicycle, Memphis.