AMONG the Xanthian Monuments Brought Over
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SAEAPIS STANDING ON A XANTHIAN MARBLE. 287 SARAPIS STANDING ON A XANTHIAN MARBLE IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM. [PLS. L VIII. AND E.] AMONG the Xanthian monuments brought over from Lycia under the direction of Sir Charles Fellows, in 1844, there is a square block of white marble, the only printed notice of which to my knowledge is to be found in the old 'Synopsis of the contents of the British Museum,' Lycian Saloon, no. 173 : ' Monument found in a Roman bath; on one side are Plutus and Tyche standing, full face ; on the other is a Persian shooting arrows in a cave, in which are an ox, a stork, a dog, a boar, a lizard, grasshopper, and fox.' (Comp. Vaux, Handbook, p. 162.) As to the locality, my friend George Scharf, Fellows' companion in that journey, informs me from his diary that the monument .was disinterred on the Roman acropolis, in January 1844. The building, situated at the foot of a polygonal wall, the chief ornament of which was a mosaic pavement including a standing figure of Leda with the swan beside her, was ' a house, palace, or bath.' I am of opinion that the contents of the reliefs are not particularly favourable to the supposition of a bath. The marble which is now placed in the new Lycian Room, no. 103, merits a greater interest than it seems to have met with hitherto. Plate LVIII. shows the two faces; the back view is on a slightly smaller scale than the front. Broken at the foot, the remainder has a height of 0'74 m. at the front, and of 081 at the back; width of each face 0-79. The sides as well as the top being but roughly cut, it is evident that the block was originally let into a wall or some other architectural con- struction. The style of the relief on the front has some similarity H.s.—VOL. vi. u 288 SARAPIS STANDING with that of numerous sepulchral monuments originating from the islands of the Archipelago and the neighbouring shores of Asia Minor. Notwithstanding the very flat pediment, the monument is scarcely anterior to the Roman epoch. No remains are left of that peculiar Lycian style which we know from the reliefs of Giolbaschi, the Nereid monument, the tombs of Merehi and Paiava, &c. As in the Greek language the dialects gradually had given way to the KOLVIJ, thus also in sculpture at the beginning of the Roman epoch a kind of xoivr) was established, and the former differences between the provinces of the Hellenized world abolished. FRONT OF THE MARBLE. The front exhibits two divinities, full face, enshrined. The low bases on which the figures rest (of the base of the male figure only a small part near the left foot is preserved) prove, that they are copies of statues; in the female figure are even retained the clumsy marble supports which, in the original statue, joined both hands with the body. Hence we may infer that the artist intended to render exactly his originals. These must have been some statues which enjoyed peculiar venera- tion ; probably they stood in Xanthos or somewhere in the vicinity. The explanation of the male figure as Plutos cannot be right. The god of wealth is represented by Greek art either as a child, mostly on the arm of a nurse (Eirene by Kephisodotos, Tyche by Xenophon), or as a youth1, always characterized by the cor- nucopiae; his appearance as a bearded man in full drapery, with a modius on the head, would be completely unheard of. There can be little doubt as to Sarapis being meant, although there is but little evidence of the worship of the Egyptian divinities in Lycia2; a similar incongruity however between artistic and written evidence is not rare. Besides, we are more accustomed to statues of Sarapis enthroned, though representa- tions of the god standing are not infrequent, particularly on 1 See Gerhard, akadem. Abhandl. ii. named Isidoroa occurs in an inscription, p. 224. Strube, Studien iiber den also from Sidyma, in Benndorf, lieisen Bilderkreis von Eleusis, p. 53. in LyJcien und Karicn, p. 73, no. 51, 2 O. I. Gr. 4262 (Sidyma). A man 32. ON A XANTHIAN MARBLE IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM S::coins. It wil^l be wortWtha while to examine more in Egypt of the PtoWs, the ir r ; two accounts tota% ^ffe^t S Athenodoros from Tarsos, one of the teachers of OctavT anus 6) traced back the zmage of Sarapis to Sesostris, or Rhamses the Great who had ,t made by an artist named B^axisTt of a seven old mixture of various metals and of precious stones he whole was punted over with dark colour. Kroker • ' to me to be right in observing that these details refer to Comp. Overbeck, griech. Kunst- with ii. p. 305. Lafaye, hist. dwiniiis d'AUxandrie hors i j • de VEgypte, p. 16 ; 248 ; 885.-I beg to ,• express my gratitude for several hfnts and communications, particularly on 2 Z, J «vf "'"' numismatic points, to my friend, cat J ** Professor Gardner 'and Dr" Imhoo ! tath I COntem Blumer of Winterthur. Toprof ^ 7 - Gardner I am particularly indebted for the composition of P1E. clemeM Zoega, nummi Aegyptii, p. 398. ' u 2 290 SARAPIS STANDING not of Greek but of Egyptian art; and indeed the story main- tains that Sesostris meant to have his forefather Osiris repre- sented. I am therefore inclined to believe that the assertion of Athenodoros, far from deserving to be rejected as absolutely fabulous, deals with the old Egyptian statue of Osiris as lord of the infernal region, which had its proper place in the ancient sanctuary of Apis in the Rhakotis. Only the name of the artist, Bryaxis, betrays Greek authorship; Athenodoros, however, was prudent enough to point out expressly that this Bryaxis was not the Athenian artist but a mere name-sake of him (pv-% 6 'A0r]valo<;, aWos Be rt? o/tt&W/io? e/ceivm TO> JSpvdgiSi). Completely different is another report which concerns the origin of the Greek image of Sarapis in the Rhakotis. This was said by nearly unanimous tradition to have come from Sinope 1, the difference of opinion referring only to two details. Some authors claim the honour of having introduced the foreign statue for Ptolemaeus Soter2, others for his successor Philadelphos3. Of greater importance is the difference that Plutarch and Clemens regard the statue as representing originally Pluto, whereas Tacitus assigns to it even in its former home at Sinope the name and character of Sarapis4. Certainly the former opinion is more trustworthy. The whole account of the bring- ing over of the statue from Sinope labours, to be sure, under certain difficulties; especially the dearth said to have happened at Sinope is rather remarkable in a chief city of the Pontos so fertile in grain6. Hence Lumbroso's opinion that the Sinope of the tradition is nothing but a Greek misinterpretation, either intentional or by mistake, of sen-hapi ' seat of Apis'6, is very alluring; the argument loses however much of its force when we consider that the question is not as to the origin of the god himself and his worship, but only about that of his Greek image. 1 The expression SIVWITITJIS Zeus in laid stress upon by Lumbroso. Dionys. perieg. 255, is due to the later 6Comp. Kroker, l.l. identification of Sarapis with Zeus. 6 Brugsch, geograph. Insehr. i. p. 240, 2 Plut. de Is. 28. Tacitus, hist. iv. has interpreted in this way the Xivaiaov 63; 6i. opos near Memphis mentioned by 3 Clem. Alex, protr. p. 42. Accord- Eustathios, ad Dionys. 255. Plew ing to Isidoros the statue came from seems to be hypercritical in taking Seleukeia, apparently in the reign of (p. 20) that name to be a mere fiction Ptolemaeus III. Euergetes, see Clemens of Eustathios, intended to connect and Tacitus, l.l. the Sinopian tradition with that of 4 This discrepancy has been justly Memphis. ON A XANTHIAN MARBLE IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 291 This may, of course, have been made in Alexandria by some Greek artist, but I see no decisive reason why it should not have been introduced from abroad. But at any rate it appears to me inconsistent with sound historical method to mix up the completely different traditions of Athenodoros with that relative to Sin ope so as to attribute the Greek statue to Bryaxis who is named only in the former tradition, an'd to identify this artist, notwithstanding the express warning of Athenodoros, with the Athenian companion of Skopas1. There is also another reason to doubt this supposition. The earliest certain repre- sentation of Sarapis is on coins of the times of Ptolemseus VI. Philometor, about B.C. 1702; the next instances are on rude copper coins of Sicily belonging to the Eoman epoch 3; other- wise Sarapis scarcely occurs on coins anterior to the beginning of the Christian sera. On these coins the god bears no modius, but at the top of his laurel wreath appears the small head- ornament of Osiris; hair and beard are rich and curly; the fore- head projects strongly above the eyes. The head has throughout the character of those heads of Zeus which nowadays generally are attributed to the school or artistic influence of Lysippos. Now, the same character strongly marks the many heads of Sarapis to be met on statues, busts, coins, engraved stones. We may therefore conjecture with probability that this head goes back to a famous image in the main place of the worship of Sarapis, and that this was precisely the great statue brought according to the legend to Alexandria by Ptolemy.