OXFORD STUDIES IN ANCIENT CULTURE AND REPRESENTATION General Editors Simon Price R. R. R. Smith Oliver Taplin OXFORD STUDIES IN ANCIENT CULTURE AND REPRESENTATION Oxford Studies in Ancient Culture and Representation publishes signiWcant inter- disciplinary research into the visual, social, political, and religious cultures of the ancient Mediterranean world. The series includes work which combines diVerent kinds of representations which are usually treated separately. The overarching programme is to integrate images, monuments, texts, performances and rituals with the places, participants, and broader historical environment that gave them meaning. The Beautiful Burial in Roman Egypt Art, Identity, and Funerary Religion CHRISTINA RIGGS 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With oYces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Christina Riggs 2005 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2005 All rights reserved. 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ISBN 0-19-927665-X 978-0-19-927665-3 13579108642 For Denis This page intentionally left blank preface This book looks at the intersection of two ancient cultures through their art. The questions it asks are, on the one hand, quite general: how do artists combine the iconographies and representational forms of diVerent visual traditions, and why? On the other hand, they are speciWc to a time and place: Egypt from the generation just before its conquest by Rome to the early Byzantine era, roughly from the middle of the Wrst century bc to the end of the third century ad. The study focuses on the combination of Greek and Egyptian art forms in the funerary sphere, where naturalistic mummy portraits have received the bulk of popular and schol- arly attention because they provide a rare glimpse of ancient Greek painting in a form that is intimately familiar to Western viewers. Where this book diVers from other studies of funerary art in Roman Egypt is in considering the numerous works of art that did not rely on naturalistic Greek art forms, or that subsumed Greek features into an otherwise Egyptian setting. The coYns, masks, and other works discussed here have often been dismissed as crude or anomalous or eccentric by modern scholars, but presenting them in their archaeological and cultural context has helped reveal the intentions, working prac- tices, and inventiveness of the artisans who created ‘beautiful burials’ for their patrons. In a changing cultural landscape, the constancy of Egyptian mortuary practice met a need in local communities, and close scrutiny of the texts and art from such burials also reveals many details about individuals’ lives and deaths, from their names, professions, and family relationships to the roles of age, gender, and status within the social structure. At the same time, the beautiful burial had an ultimate goal—the gloriWcation of the dead. My research on this subject began as a doctoral thesis at Oxford University under the supervision of Helen Whitehouse, whose guidance and expertise made the project possible. I am indebted to Bert Smith and Simon Price for their insights throughout the process of revising the thesis for publication; to Mark Smith, Martin Andreas Stadler, and Mark Depauw for their patient advice on the Egyptian and Demotic texts; and to Terry Wilfong, Alan Bowman, and Helen Whitehouse for their comments on portions of the book. I am especially grateful to Karl-Theodor Zauzich for permitting me to include his unpublished translation of the Demotic inscription on a mummy mask (Berlin, Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, 111-89) in Chapter 3. The GriYth Egyptological Fund of Oxford University provided generous Wnancial support for travel and photography expenses and for the production of colour plates. The book was completed while I was the Barns and GriYth Junior Research Fellow in viii preface Egyptology at The Queen’s College, Oxford, and I thank the Provost and Govern- ing Body of the College for their Wnancial support. The research for this book depended on Wrst-hand study of objects in European, North American, and Egyptian museums, where curators and staV generously Welded my requests for access, information, and photographs. In particular, I would like to acknowledge the assistance of the following individuals: Peter Lacovara, the Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, Atlanta; Regine Schulz, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore; Ingeborg Müller, Caris-Beatrice Arnst, and Frank Marohn of the Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, Berlin; Richard Fazzini, the late James Romano, and Edward Bleiberg at the Brooklyn Museum of Art; Ken Bohac at the Cleveland Museum of Art; Sally Dummer of the Ipswich Borough Council Museums and Galleries; Maarten Raven at the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden; John Taylor, Tania Watkins, and Ewan Walker from the British Museum, London; Dorothea Arnold, Marsha Hill, and Claudia Farias of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Emily Teeter at the Oriental Institute Museum, Chicago; Roberta Cortopassi and Marie-France Aubert at the Louvre, Paris; Carolyn Graves-Brown, The Egypt Centre, Swansea; and Roberta Shaw of the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. C.R. Manchester April 2004 contents Illustrations xi Colour Plates xix Abbreviations xx Note on Names and Transliteration xxii Map of Egypt in the Roman Period xxiii 1 Introduction: Art, Identity, and Funerary Religion 1 Art 6 Identity 14 Funerary Religion 26 Approaches to the Funerary Art of Roman Egypt 36 2 Osiris, Hathor, and the Gendered Dead 41 ‘The Osiris Montsuef ’ and ‘the Hathor Tanuat’ 42 The Kharga Oasis CoYn Group 48 The Akhmim CoYn Group 61 Summary 94 3 Portraying the Dead 95 The Human Figure in Greek and Egyptian Art 95 Mummies and Masks from Meir 105 Naturalistic Portraiture and the Egyptian Funerary Tradition 139 Summary 173 4 Art and Archaism in Western Thebes 175 Ptolemaic and Roman Thebes: History and Topography 175 ‘A Great Man in His City’: The Family of Soter 182 The Pebos Family Burials 205 Naturalistic Portraiture at Thebes 217 The Deir el-Bahri Mummy Masks 232 Summary 243 5 Conclusions: The ‘Beautiful Burial’ in Roman Egypt 245 x contents Appendix: List of Objects 257 Bibliography 302 Register of Museums 323 General Index 331 illustrations Map of Egypt in the Roman Period xxiii figures 1 Shroud for a woman, purchased at Akhmim (Panopolis). Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 50.650. © 2003 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 3 2 Detail from the side of a female mummy mask, from Meir (near Hermopolis), Middle Egypt. Berlin, Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, v‰gm 111-89. Photograph by Margarete Büsing, courtesy of the Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. 10 3 Fragment from a mummy mask. Paris, Louvre, e 25384. Copyright Georges PONCET/Musée du Louvre. 13 4 Mummy mask inscribed for Titos Flaugios [sic] Demetrios, from Hawara. Ipswich Borough Council Museums and Galleries, Ipswich Museum, r1921-89. Photograph by D. AtWeld, copyright Ipswich Borough Council Museums and Galleries. 21 5 Male mummy with shroud and mask, from Hawara. © Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, University College London. 30 6 The shroud seen in Fig. 5. Dublin, National Museum of Ireland, 1911:442. Courtesy of the National Museum of Ireland. 31 7 Wall painting, from Karanis (Kom Aushim), House c65. Photograph by George Swain. Source: Kelsey Museum Archives 5.3295. Courtesy of the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. 33 8 Detail from papyrus P. Rhind I, from Thebes. Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Museum. After G. Möller, Die beiden Totenpapyrus Rhind des Museums zu Edinburg (Leipzig 1913), pl. 7. 43 9 Limestone pair statue from a tomb at Dendera, Dynasty 11, c.2040 bc. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, e 1971. Courtesy of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. 44 10 Detail from papyrus P. Rhind I, from Thebes. Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Museum. After G. Möller, Die beiden Totenpapyrus Rhind des Museums zu Edinburg (Leipzig 1913), pl. 7. 46 11 Detail from papyrus P. Rhind II, from Thebes. Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Museum. After G. Möller, Die beiden Totenpapyrus Rhind des Museums zu Edinburg (Leipzig 1913), pl. 15. 47 12 Detail from papyrus P. Rhind II, from Thebes. Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Museum. After G. Möller, Die beiden Totenpapyrus Rhind des Museums zu Edinburg (Leipzig 1913), pl. 8. 47 13 Male coYn from Kharga Oasis. Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of the John Huntington Art and Polytechnic Trust, 1914.715 (3). © The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2002. 50 xii illustrations 14 Side view of the coYn in Fig.