Description:
A highly interesting statuette of the Egyptian child god Horus, known as Harpocrates in Greek. He is depicted as a young boy, naked, with the so-called sidelock of youth (a symbol of childhood in ancient Egypt). The index finger of his right hand is pointing towards his mouth, just below the lips. Although later tradition explained this as a gesture for silence, calling Harpocrates "the god who holds his finger to his lips for silence sake" (Ovid, Metamorphoses 9:692), it is in fact another indication of the god being a child; the depiction of the god with his finger to his mouth (Gardiner sign list A17) is the hieroglyphic sign for the word "child". Harpocrates was among other things the protector of children.
The god is wearing the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, also known as the pschent (the Greek transcription of the Egyptian pa sekhemty, the two powerful ones), and is shown standing, leaning with his left arm on a tree stump and holding a fruit-laden cornucopia (a symbol of abundance and nourishment), next to which a snake is coiling up.
The cornucopia and the snake were more often associated. The cornucopia became the attribute of several Greek and Roman deities, particularly those associated with the harvest, prosperity, and related notions. Ancient mythology knew various traditions about the origin of the cornucopia. In one of them (as told by Archilochus, 7th century B.C.; Pindar and Sophocles, both 5th century B.C.; Publius Ovidius Naso, 1st century B.C.-1st century C.E., and others), the Greek river god Acheloos (who could change his shape) wrestled with Heracles for the hand of Deianeira; one of the shapes of Acheloos in this fight was that of a snake, another one that of a bull. In one of the versions Heracles broke off one of the bull-horns of Acheloos, and the Naiads filled it with fruit and flowers, transforming it into the "horn of plenty" (cornucopia) (Ovidius, Metamorphoses, 9:1-88).
Strabo, 1st century B.C. - 1st century C.E. provided a rationalised account of the Acheloos legend, which he believed arose from the nature of the river Acheloos, the noise of the water resembling a bull's voice and its windings and length resembling a snake (Geography, 10.2.19; similar Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, 4.35.3-4). According to these authors Heracles diverted the course of the river, creating new fertile land in the river delta, which came to be known as Amaltheia's horn of plenty.
The ancient Egyptians feared snakes as dangerous, deadly animals, but also saw them as protective creatures. Since they have the ability to cyclically peel off their skin, they were the symbol of regeneration, and thus also of immortality and fertility. In the Amduat, a funerary composition of the New Kingdom, we encounter several serpents which were believed to have a positive notion: the snake Mehen coiled around the sun god Re protectively during his journey through the underworld; in another division of the Amduat the serpent Sa-ta appears as a symbol of resurrection, and in the last hour the sun god rejuvenates inside the body of a gigantic snake, called "Life of the gods", just before he is reborn. For an overview see Argyros (2018); Reemes (2015). Similarly, the snake in Greek religion is often described in dualistic opposites like life and death, whereas it also played the role of a protective guardian (Rodriguez Pérez, 2021, p. 1-23)
The statuette was created in a period when ancient Egyptian religious ideas and those from the ancient Greek and Roman world were often syncretised. There had been Greek settlements in Egypt since the 7th century B.C., and there were contacts between Egypt and the Aegean from the archaic to the classical periods, meaning that for example Isis became known outside Egypt long before the Hellenistic period (Woolf (2014), p. 75). Her cult spread across the Mediterranean through travelers, who built shrines for her in Greek cities. The spread of Egyptian beliefs and syncretism were also helped by the contacts of both Greek and non-Greek people with the Egyptian cults in Ptolemaic Egypt. The first Ptolemy knew that after the conquest of Alexander the Great, he had to respect the religion of the Egyptians in order to reconcile them. But he also wanted support from the Greeks living in Egypt. Therefore, as many scholars believe, he created the cult of a new syncretistic god, called Sarapis. This god was based on the Egyptian god Osiris and the sacred bull Apis, but was also identified with several Greek deities including Asklepios, Dionysos, Hades, Helios and above all Zeus. He became very popular and was worshipped in Egypt and in other parts of the Graeco-Roman world. The last centuries B.C. saw a diffusion of religious traditions throughout the Hellenistic world. For example the cults of Isis and Sarapis reached Roman Italy together with many other religions (Orlin, 2010; see also the many entries in the series edited by Vermaseren), and the same applies to the religious thoughts concerning Isis' son Harpocrates. As a result small statuettes of Harpocrates, both in bronze and in terracotta, were found scattered throughout the Roman Empire.
Bibliography:
Ariadne Argyros, Reviving Ophidia: Godly Serpents in Ancient Egyptian Magic and Mythology (University of Vermont, Department of Classics, 2018);
Eric M. Orlin, Foreign Cults in Rome. Creating a Roman Empire (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010);
Dana Michael Reemes, The Egyptian Ouroboros. An Iconological and Theologica/ Study (University of California, Los Angeles, 2015);
Diana Rodriguez Pérez, "The Meaning of the Snake in the Ancient Greek World", Arts, 10,2 (2021), p. 1-26;
Sandra Sandri, Har-pa-chered (Harpokrates): die Genese eines âgyptischen Gôtterkindes (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta, 151) (Leuven, Peeters, 2006);
Maarten J. Vermaseren (ed.), Études préliminaires aux religions orientales dans I'Empire romain / Die orientalischen Religionen im Rômereich (Leiden, Brill, 1961-1990);
Greg Woolf, "Isis and the Evolution of Religions", in Laurent Bricault - Miguel John Versluys (eds.), Power, Politics and the Cults of Isis. Proceedings of the Vth International Conference of Isis Studies, Boulogne-sur-Mer, October 13-15, 2011 (Religions in the Graeco-Roman World, 180) (Leiden, Brill, 2014), p. 62-92.
Dating:
Roman Imperial Period, circa 1st century C.E.
Size:
Height 7.8 cm.
Provenance:
Dutch private collection H.v.H.; with AAG Auctioneers, Amsterdam, 2018; Dutch private collection L.J. Jansen; with Gorny & Mosch Giessener Münzhandlung, München, 18 December 2013, lot 282; private collection; with Gorny & Mosch Giessener Münzhandlung, München, 23 June 2010, lot 288. Most recently with Kunsthandel Mieke Zilverberg, Amsterdam.
Condition:
With a dark patina. Head of the snake broken, otherwise intact.
Price:
€ 8,500
Stock number:
E2105