Un gruppo scultoreo da Dendera al Museo del Cairo: due fanciulli divini e i due luminari

The sculptural group in stone reconsidered in this article is a representation of a couple of youthful figures, standing entwined in the coils of two large serpents, crowned with a solar disk and a lunar crescent. The statue was discovered in Dendera in 1918 and is now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo (JE 46278). A hypothetical identification proposed by the author would see in the figures the twin children of Cleopatra VII and Mark Anthony, represented here as the two Egyptian astral deities. The author explores the iconographic and stylistic issues involved, arriving at a late Ptolemaic date for the sculpture, fitting for the proposed identification.

Deux fragments de portraits funéraires romains de Deir el-Bahari

Two fragments of painted Roman funerary portraits on wooden panels of the Fayum type, discovered in 2001 during a revisiting of the Third Intermediate Period shaft tombs inside the Chapel of Hatshepsut in the Royal Mortuary Cult Complex at the Temple of Hatshepsut in Deir el-Bahari, come from 19th century excavations, hence are without anything but a general context. The pieces are very small—fragment of a robe, sliver of a face with one eye—but in a brilliant analysis of iconography and style Kiss identifies one as a depiction of a female, possibly a priestess of Isis, from the second half of the 2nd century AD, and the other as a male portrait from the 2nd century. The portraits may belong to what some scholars have called “Theban” painted funerary portraits and they must have come from a Roman necropolis in West Thebes, possibly Deir el-Medineh. On any case, they are proof that mummies with painted portraits of the deceased on wooden panels fitted into the cartonnages were not unknown in ancient Thebes.

Amphoras on Knidian amphoras

The article traces the motif of an amphora in the iconography of Knidian amphora stamps in an effort to date with greater precision a Knidian amphora with two stamped handles discovered in the excavations at Marina el-Alamein. In effect, the handleless amphora stamp on the container from Marina was assigned to Period VII and dates most probably to the end of the 1st century AD. Additionally, the author discusses other motifs occurring on Knidian amphora stamps, including a bucranium, prora, anchor, oar and rudder, bee, bunch of grapes, and heroes and deities, such as Poseidon represented by a dolphin and trident, Dionysus related to the thyrsus amd Hermes seen in a caduceus and herm.

Wiktor Andrzej Daszewski: Essay presented on his 75th birthday anniversary (and list of publications)

A portrait of Professor Wiktor Andrzej Daszewski (who died on 17 January 2021), his life achievement and scientific output, presented to the jubilarian on the occasion of his 75th birthday. Daszewski directed the Polish excavations at Nea Paphos in Cyprus from 2006, continuing his studies there even when retired, discovered and excavated for 20 years the Graeco-Roman harbor site at Marina el-Alamein on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt, and published a number of books on the mosaic art. He acted as Director of the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology University of Warsaw from 1980 to 1989, and contributed to saving and restoring the archaeological heritage of Carthage under the UNESCO umbrella.

Interprétation de la lettre ταῦ sur le vêtement du Christ et du geste de l’ogdoade sur la mosaïque absidiale de l’église Santa Pudenziana à Rome

The author explores the interpretation of the Greek letter tau on the robe of Christ represented on the 4th-century apsidal mosaic in the church of Santa Pudenziana in Rome, as well as the sign of the Ogdoad that Christ makes with his fingers. He discusses the ancient written sources for the symbolic meaning of the letter, as well as the letters iota and gamma, also found in similar early Christian contexts, as well as the iconographic evidence for the use of the letter tau, seen as a cross in shape, in glyptics, amulets, inscriptions and relief sculpture on sarcophagi, among others. In the context of the Santa Pudenziana mosaic, the presence of the letter is significant for the interpretation of the representation as symbolizing the redemption of man through the Passion of the Lord. The sign of the Ogdoad should be seen as evocation of the universal nature of the resurrection of Christ for all mankind, making the presence of the tau on Christ’s robes in this representation entirely comprehensible.

The peristyle of House H1 in the ancient town at Marina el-Alamein

A thorough study of the architectural elements found in the ruins of House H1 in the northern part of the ancient town at the site of Marina el-Alamein led to a reconstruction of a two-storeyed portico around the inner courtyard. The upper storey of the peristyle would have accommodated the galleries from which one could enter the rooms on the first floor. The author, an architectural historian, presents the architecture and proportions of two-storeyed peristyle porticoes as they would have been implemented at this seaside town in the Mediterranean coast of Egypt, just 100 km west of Alexandria, and uses this example to review the known parallels from other regions, including the “Palazzo delle Colonne” in Ptolemais and the Meroitic Palace of Natakamani in Gebel Barkal, Sudan. He concludes that both the general layout of the house at Marina el-Alamein and the two-storeyed peristyle architectural design were hardly unique in the Hellenistic and Roman world of North Africa, but what made the Marina house different was the stateliness of its appearance.

From the history of ancient Rhizon/Risinium: Why the Illyrian king Agron and queen Teuta came to a bad end and who was Ballaios?

The author, who has headed the University of Warsaw excavation project in Risan/Rhizon on the Adriatic coast in Montenegro since 2001, reviews the results of excavations ten years into the project and explores the archaeological evidence for historical sources mentioning the ill-fated King Agron and Queen Teuta, the latter being the queen who faced off the Romans in the Third Illyrian War before ultimately succumbing to the invaders. Also described is a hoard of more than 4000 bronze coins of a ruler called Ballaios, forgotten by history, whose person is now slowly being reintroduced into the lineage of Illyrian dynasts, correcting the erroneous dating that Arthur Evans, who was the first to note the existence of this king, assigned to his reign.

Roman ceramic thymiaterion from a Coptic hermitage in Thebes

The rather massive and relatively well-preserved incense burner, distinguished not only by its size and weight, but also by quality of execution and elaborate painted decoration, was found in the fill of a Coptic hermitage located in a disused Pharaonic tomb at Sheikh Abd el-Gurna in West Thebes. A consideration of a limited set of known parallels for this thymiaterion, which is not a well studied form among the pottery from Roman Egypt, placed this piece between the Hellenistic and late Roman periods, more specifically, in the 3rd-4th century AD when a characteristic kind of slip started being used on the more "elegant" ceramic vessels. It must have come from either a tomb or rich residential surroundings, and found its way to the hermitage with the monks who were resourceful collecting of a whole range of "antiquarian" objects which they adapted for other uses.

Human remains from Marina el-Alamein

The aim of the paper is to draw a health profile of a past human population—the Graeco-Roman inhabitants of a harbor city at the site of Marina el-Alamein on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt—and to study levels of adaptation of this population to the environment in which it lived. The author presents her methodology: the conceptual framework, skeletal inventory and scoring procedures, the uses her data to discuss in detail the paleodemography (demographic population structure and patterns of mortality) and physiological stress (disruption of growth and maturation), which can be defined as a physical disruption resulting from unhealthy environmental conditions with deleterious effect on both the individual and population level. Life expectancy was found to be at 39.1 years for males and 33.4 years for women. Based on skeletal growth of the most vulnerable subgroups of the population, infants and children, The people who were buried in the tombs of Marina el-Alamein lived a stressful life in an impoverished environment and their diet was inadequate. Overall dental health was very poor, significantly more so among women, and the high rates of arthritis and degenerative diseases of the spine and the major joints were suggestive of heavy workloads in life.

A fish from the sea

The author uses the vehicle of a jubilar text to explore fish transport in antiquity looking at the issue from the point of view of Egyptian Alexandria. For instance, the appearance of Pontic salted fish on the Alexandrian market is testimony of far-flung trade. Papyri bring several mentions of such salted fish of superior quality (tarichos leptos) being sent to enrich the staple diet of the Oxyrhynchite elite. The fish that reached Oxyrhynchus could have also come from the Red Sea, taking advantage of fairly regular communication in the Roman period. Salted fish were also produced locally in Egypt, mostly from river fish, by the fishermen, but also by professional taricheutae, who were also the embalmers preparing the mummies.