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Egypt Exploration Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The
Journal of Egyptian Archaeology
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2007 BRIEF COMMUNICATIONS 263
A recent acquisition of the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities of the British Museum is
showing the apotheosis or epiphany of an anguipede Dionysos, accompanied by a child-god.1
A marble stele, said to be from Naukratis, has recently come into the collections of the
Greek and Roman Department of the British Museum (fig. 1 and pl. VIII). It is rectangular,
roughly finished at the rear, shaped in the form of a sunken panel with raised edges on its
three remaining sides, and has a depiction of Dionysos to front, his lower trunk merging into
the massive body and tail of a snake, coiled into a figure-of-eight. The god wears a skimpy
nebris, a fawn-skin, knotted at his right shoulder and wrapped round his left wrist. An equally
lightweight himation is draped over the left shoulder and round the right hip; despite these
two items of clothing, his genitals are exposed. A filled cornucopia is held in his left hand,
resting against his shoulder. The cupped hand of his foreshortened and lowered right arm
holds a small pyramidal bunch of grapes, a rather unusual representation, as grapes normally
dangle from the hand. The god has no beard and his hair is parted in the centre, with long
twisted locks falling onto his shoulders; he may have a floral wreath, but this is uncertain:
the details are not as fine as one would wish. He wears that complex three-fold version of
the atef crown, the hemhem crown (with triple bound reeds in baluster form and sun discs
at the top of each such element, and ostrich feathers or uraei on each side, all supported by
horizontal ram's horns of corkscrew shape).2 This triple crown was worn by several different
17 Wie sich immer deutlicher zeigt, ist das Koptische nie zu einer Wissenschaftssprache gewor
wissenschaftlichen und naturphilosophischen Diskurs der Zeit schrieb man Griechisch, spater
senstransfer via Translation vom Griechischen ins Koptische mag so eher in den praxisorientier
magieunterstiitzter Heilkunde (wie im Fall von P. Berlin P 8313) und praktischer alchemistischer
Fall von P. Berlin P 8316) als in den theoretischen Bereichen der Theurgie und Naturphilosoph
den haben. Den Kernbestand des koptischen Dossiers zur Alchemie bilden iibrigens spate (c.io.
Ubersetzungen aus dem Arabischen.
18 Dieleman, Priests, Tongues, and Rites, ch. 4, vor allem 127-30.
1 British Museum reg. no. GR 2005.9-1 9.1. Marble stele of Dionysos with the lower part of his body in snake
form. Ht. 25.8 cm. Paper label attached: 'Isis-uraeus or Thermuthis and Harpocrates. From diggings at Naucratis
(Egypt)'. Once Gustav Mustaki Collection. Principal donor: the Caryatid Fund. The author is grateful to Peter
Higgs, Catherine Johns, and Sam Moorhead for fruitful discussions and suggestions; and also the JEA referees
for most helpful remarks and references.
2 For a plethora of hemhem crowns, worn by pharaohs and gods, see E. Vassilika, Ptolemaic Philae (OLA 34;
Leuven, 1989), 90, 301-4. Most have discs (solar and lunar?) at top and/or bottom of the three baluster-like
elements of the crown. The horns are those of the long extinct sheep Ovis longipes palaeoaegypticus: B. Watterson,
Gods of Ancient Egypt (Stroud, 1996), 189. The apparent greater use of the hemhem crown in Ptolemaic and
Roman times may be actual and not necessarily an accident of survival.
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264 BRIEF COMMUNICATIONS JEA 93
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2007 BRIEF COMMUNICATIONS 265
7 Wilkinson, Complete Gods, 202. A late Ptolemaic representation of Dionysos wearing the hemhem crown,
with royal connotations, adorns a sealing found at Nea Paphos: H. Kyrieleis, 'Agyptische Bildelemente auf Siegel-
abdriicken aus Nea Paphos (Zypern)', Stadel-Jahrbuch 19 (2004), in (fig. 10).
8 A glass intaglio sealstone in the British Museum, copying nicolo, a microcrystalline quartz, has been recognised
as Cleopatra VII: H. B. Walters, Catalogue of the Engraved Gems and Cameos, Greek, Etruscan and Roman, in the
British Museum (London, 1926), no. 3085; S.-A. Ashton, 'Identifying the Egyptian-style Ptolemaic Queens',
in S. Walker and P. Higgs (eds), Cleopatra of Egypt: From History to Myth (London, 2001), 156 (no. 153); R. S
Bagnall and D. W. Rathbone (eds), Egypt from Alexander to the Copts: An Archaeological and Historical Guide
(London, 2004), fig. 1.1.3. H. Maehler, 'Ptolemaic Queens with a Triple Uraeus', CdE 27 (2003), 303 sees in this
gem a female head wearing the hemhem crown, rather than Cleopatra with a triple uraeus.
9 J. G. Milne, A History of Egypt under Roman Rule (3rd rev. edn, London, 1924), 15 (fig. 15). The crown has
youthful solar associations: J. Yoyotte and P. Chuvin, 'Le Zeus Casios de Peluse a Tivoli: Une hypothese', BIFAO
88 (1988), 165-80. Three pharaohs in granite, Egyptianising, and probably of Hadrianic date, wearing the hemhem
crown, were found in 1779 in the Villa di Cassio at Tivoli (ibid., pl. xv). Even a deceased human (albeit perhaps
identified with Osiris-Dionysos) can wear this crown: A. K. Bowman, Egypt after the Pharaohs 332 bc-ad 642:
From Alexander to the Arab Conquest (2nd edn; London, 1996), 120 (fig. 72: Isidoros from Terenuthis).
10 H. Carter and A. C. Mace, The Tomb of Tut Ankh. Amen (London, 1923), I, pis ii, lxii-lxiv, and countless
other publications.
11 For the atef crown in many manifestations, worn by gods and kings, see Vassilika, Ptolemaic Philaey 88-90
and 295-9. Khnum and Heryshef with this crown are shown respectively in Wilkinson, Complete Godsy 194 and
W. M. F. Petrie, Ehnasya, igo4 (MEEF 26; London, 1905), frontispiece. For a king wearing the atef Crown, see,
for example, Amenhotep III in Luxor: L. Bell, 'The New Kingdom "Divine" Temple: The Example of Luxor',
and also Rameses III at Medinet Habu: G. Haeny, 'New Kingdom "Mortuary Temples" and "Mansions of
Millions of Years'", both in B. E. Shafer (ed.), Temples of Ancient Egypt (London, 1998), 108 (fig. 39) and 141
(fig. 48) respectively.
12 E. Simon, 'Iakchos', in Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, V (Zurich, 1990), 612-14 (hereafter
LIMC); Dionysos with Iakchos on a red-figured vase: C. Kerenyi, The Gods of the Greeks (London, 1976),
pl. xvi.a.
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266 BRIEF COMMUNICATIONS JEA 93
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2007 BRIEF COMMUNICATIONS 269
have had another temple at Terenuthis in the Delta.2
version (Ermuthis) of the Egyptian grain-goddess
The temple and the cult at Narmuthis is well disc
of the splendid representations of the goddess a
term Italian excavations of the site.30 Renenutet wa
ultimately of the Egyptian family; she was a deit
of an individual's life, but mainly looked after crops
had some connection with Demeter (and was often
and was also regarded, as were other deities, as re
The Dionysos on our stele, with its massive sin
although not in gender, to the many representation
27, and this is perhaps indicative of the syncretic
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270 BRIEF COMMUNICATIONS JEA 93
Donald M. Bailey
Addendum to R. B. Parkinson, 'The Text of Khakheperreseneb'. New Readings of British Museum EA 5645, and
an Unpublished Ostracon', JEA 83 (1997), 55-68.
of grapes and a thyrsos, flanked by satyrs and accompanied by Pan. The god's facial features are close to those on
the stele discussed here.
36 Seaford, Dionysos, 43. A Dionyseion is known from Oxyrhynchus, P. Oxy VI 908, 8: B. P. Grenfell and A. S.
Hunt, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, VI (nos 845-1000) (EES GRM 9; London, 1908), 255-6; J. Whitehorne, 'The
Pagan Cults of Roman Oxyrhynchus', in W. Haase (ed.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen Welt: Geschichte
und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung, II 18/5 (Berlin, 1995), 3066; P. J. Parsons, City of the Sharp-
nosed Fish: Greek Lives in Roman Egypt (London, 2007), 49. See ibid., 156 for the fifth-century poem Dionysiaka
by Nonnos of Panopolis, which, with much snake imagery, describes the Indian expedition of the god.
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Plate VIII .5^93
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