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Antinoopolis: A Hadrianic Foundation in Egypt

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... To commemorate their love and to "preserve the image of his (Antinous') outstanding beauty" Hadrian formed a cult to worship the boy, with a festival held every year and an athletic competition every five. In addition to the cult Hadrian formed a city at the spot on the Nile where Antinous gave his life, naming it Antinoopolis, a metropolis that remained a cultural center for centuries (Bell, 1940). Hadrian had Antinous deified and ordered thousands of statues erected in his image. ...
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p>In 1747 Frederick II of Prussia acquired a rare and highly valuable statue from antiquity and gave it the description of Antinous (the ill-fated lover of the Roman Emperor Hadrian). Although the bronze statue had always been accepted as an original from ancient Greece, the statue eventually assumed the identity of the Roman Antinous. How could Frederick II, an accomplished collector, ignore the blatant style and chronological discrepancies to interpret a Greek statue as a later Roman deity? This article will use the portraiture of Antinous to facilitate an examination of the progression of classical art interpretation and diagnose the freedom between the art historian and the dilettante. It will expose the necessary partition between the obligations of the art historian to provide technical interpretations of a work within the purview of the discipline with that of the unique interpretation made by individual viewers. This article confirms that although Frederick II lived before the transformative scholarship of Winckelmann, the freedom of interpreting a work is an abiding and intrinsic right of every individual viewer. </p
... 78 In Fayum, the equivalent group to the gymnasial class was 'The 6475 Hellenes of the Arsinoite nome', 79 who were presumably the descendants of the Greek and Hellenized mercenaries settled in Fayum by the early Ptolemies. 80 Although there is no example of an Aiguptios who became an Ioudaios, or vice versa, an Aiguptios or an Ioudaios had access to both Alexandrian and Roman citizenship. 81 Harpokras, the Memphite physician of Pliny, is an example of an Aiguptios who obtained Alexandrian and Roman citizenship, suggesting that it was possible for an individual to have multiple ethnicities. ...
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Egyptologists and classicists have considered ancient Egyptian religion from different perspectives. The creator and warrior goddess Neith and her northern cult centre Sais (Sa el-Haggar) were points of scholarly interest. Light has been shed on the assimilation of Neith with the Greek warrior goddess Athena and on lanterns and lamps associated through their figurative details with Athena-Neith. Among the festivals confirmed in Greek papyri for Athena-Neith at Sais is the festival of lamps (Lychnocaia), which has not been well covered so far. This paper deals with the illumination of lamps for Neith-Athena from the Pharaonic to the Roman period. The Lychnocaia was a nocturnal ceremony of a spectacular festival for Neith-Athena in Sais, Esna, and countrywide, and I argue that it also symbolised a ceremony in the Osirian myth. The paper first addresses the nature of this ceremony in Pharaonic Egypt and evidence for its maintenance in Graeco-Roman times. Then, the identification of Athena and Neith and the symbolism of the Lychnocaia are addressed. Finally, the Lychnocaia is considered from an ethnic perspective, highlighting the complexity of associating ritual activities with ethnic or legal groups in Graeco-Roman Egypt.
... Hadrian, traditionally seen as a philo-Egyptian emperor as well as a philhellene, visited Egypt and during his brief stay his favourite, Antinoos, was drowned. Near the site of his drowning, Hadrian ordered the construction of a new city, Antinoopolis of the New Hellenes (Bell 1940). Although it may have had some traditional Egyptian-style temples and ceremonials, the city was to be a bastion of Hellenism in Middle Egypt, a centre of Greek urban life (Kühn 1913). ...
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This is the final publisher edited version of the paper which was originally presented to a symposium held at the University of Leicester in November 1994 and published as Alston, R. ‘Conquest by text: Juvenal and Plutarch on Egypt’ in Webster, J.; Cooper, N. (ed.) Roman Imperialism: Post-Colonial Perspectives, (© Individual authors, 1996) pp. 99-109. This volume is now out of print. Further details can be found at http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/archaeology/research/monographs.
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The cult of the Egyptian god Antinous is discussed in the paper. Antinous acted in the image of Osiris and Horus, absorbed the features of Apollo, Dionysus and other heroes, showed himself as a divine child and the pharaoh, was deified in Egyptian and Greco-Roman models that included the elements of apotheosis of the emperor and the posthumous journey of the Egyptian king to heaven. All these images allowed matching Antinous and the emperor. The Roman ruler was worshipped in Egypt as Theos Synnaos along with Antinous. Comparing the emperor with the deified Hadrian’s minion was a form of the Interpretatio Aegyptiaca of the image of the Roman ruler in the valley of the Nile. During the Great Antinous Games, in which boys and girls took part, Antinous received the images of a hero, a god, and a demon-spirit, from whom miracles and predictions were expected. The image of Antinous was combined with the image of a wreath that symbolized the victory over death, the birth of the divine child and rebirth in the afterlife.
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This paper aims to study an alabaster pedestal of Ramses II, preserved in the World Museum (Liverpool 1966.159). Currently displayed in the Ancient Egypt Gallery, Level 3, World Museum[NMGM Liverpool 66.159/ Liverpool Museum 03/061]. This pedestal has been found in Antinoopolis (El-Sheikh ʽAbadah, El-Minya, Middle Egypt). It is inscribed with lines and columns of Hieroglyphic inscriptions written in vertical and horizontal ways, which refer to the nicknames of Ramses II and the Nine Bows, the conventional enemies of the ancient Egyptians.
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Cambridge Core - Egyptology - Life in an Egyptian Village in Late Antiquity - by Giovanni R. Ruffini
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This paper offers a first examination of the unfolding of the Trinitarian controversies in the Syrian city of Edessa. By indicating possible contacts with a variety of ecclesiastical milieus, it explores institutional developments in the Edessene Church, traces its participation in the broader empire-wide debates, and suggests an avenue for further research concerning the earliest stages of construction of a local memory, embedded in ecclesiastical propaganda. The so-called 'Palut{combining dot below}ian' community of the 'Blessed City', linked to the origins of the Trinitarian disputes through Lucian of Antioch and Eusebius of Emesa, reportedly saw the participation of its bishop Aithallah in the Council of Nicaea. One of Aithallah's successors, bishop Barses, appointed to the Edessene see by virtue of his Homoian, anti-Nicene affiliation, later came to head the heavily embattled pro-Nicene community of the city as the result of a doctrinal re-alignment paralleling Meletius of Antioch's. Barses and other members of the Edessene pro-Nicene establishment (such as the presbyters Protogenes and Eulogius) were eventually exiled to Egypt during the incumbency of the pro-Homoian emperor Valens. Theodoret of Cyrrhus' account of the Egyptian exile of the 'orthodox', filled with competitive and expansionistic overtones, calls for further examination in light of the self-representation and geo-ecclesiological projects of the Edessene and Antiochene episcopates. Overall, fourth-century Edessa appears as a theologically diverse Christian center, receptive to outside intellectual and institutional trends, and fully integrated in the imperial Church.
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Mainly based on the study of a hitherto neglected epigraphic document from Antinoë, the present article aims at showing that the geometer Serenus – the author of two treatises On the Section of a Cylinder and On the Section of a Cone – lived at the beginning of the 3rdcentury AD. On the ground of a renewed study of various elements taken both from the treatises and the indirect tradition, it also suggests that Serenus must be placed among a scientific tradition closely linking geometry of conics and catoptrics that can be traced back to the works of Conon of Samos and Pythion of Thasos. This hypothesis raises the problem of the nature of his alleged Platonism, which is examined in relation to Menaechmus' heterodox constructivism. Finally, the study of an element in the Arabic transmission of the treatise on Conics by Apollonius enables us to clarify some point regarding the textual tradition of the treatises On the Section of a Cylinder and On the Section of a Cone.
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These two inscriptions come from the precinct of the temple of Hathor at Denderah (Tentyra), capital of the Tentyrite nome, just north of Thebes in Upper Egypt. The impressive remains of the complex are mostly late Ptolemaic and Roman (re)constructions, but they look Pharaonic and suggest social and cultural continuity across the centuries. The inscriptions, however, illustrate the radical changes in communal organization and administration which the Romans introduced. These changes form the subject of this paper. The first inscription dates to 12 B.C., but is almost entirely in the pre-Roman tradition. It is a trilingual dedication with the primary version in demotic (i.e. Egyptian). Augustus is god, implicitly Pharaoh, and lacks his Roman titles. The strategos (governor of the nome) Ptolemaios gives himself obsolete court titles and a string of local priesthoods. Ptolemaios came from a family which had hereditarily held local priesthoods (and probably continued to hold them after him), and his father Panas had preceded him as strategos of the Tentyrite nome, retaining office through the Roman annexation. On this occasion Ptolemaios' dedication was personal, but other dedications show him acting, like his father, as the head of local cult associations. Ptolemaios is last attested as strategos in 5 B.C. Five years later, our second inscription, which dates to 23 September A.D. I, reveals a very different situation. The dedication was made on Augustus' birthday, and was finely inscribed in Greek only. The strategos Tryphon, whose name suggests an Alexandrian sent up to the Tentyrite nome, figures only as an element of the official dating clause standard throughout Roman Egypt; he is just a cog in the Roman administrative machine. The dedication was made corporately by the local community, structured, as we will see, on the new Roman model.
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