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us with asclepius and hygeia from aquae iasae courtesy of archaeo press provincial coinage likewise often reduces telesphorus to his characteristic hooded silhouette although occasional issues depict him carrying other objects the evidence therefore suggests that the hood not the dog scroll or any other accessory served as the essential identifier of the deity coin issued by commodus with telesphorus clutching a votive object on the reverse dated to the 2nd century ce courtesy of roman provincial coinage online by the early fifth century ce however one remarkable ivory diptych from liverpool depicts telesphorus carrying a scroll while accompanying asclepius produced within the neoplatonic intellectual milieu of late antiquity this image may represent a new interpretation of the deity rather than the preservation of an earlier canonical attribute fifth century ce 400 430 ce ivory diptych showing telesphorus holding a scroll courtesy of national museums liverpool conclusion the evolution of the hooded figure s attributes reveals how flexible ancient religious imagery could be the hood remained the essential marker of identity while accompanying elements puppy objects offerings or scroll shifted according to region period and context the nysa statuette therefore occupies an intriguing place within this long tradition it preserves an unusually intimate image of a hooded child with an animal companion at a moment before the type became more standardized perhaps that is why the little refugee continues to resonate it is not only a survivor of antiquity or a witness to twentieth century displacement it is also a reminder that objects like people can carry histories far beyond the circumstances of their creation if you enjoyed this post never miss out on future posts by following me by email posted by mary harrsch at 11 23 am 0 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest sunday july 12 2026 from four jars to one shrine the last chapter in the history of canopic equipment by mary harrsch 2026 most of us picture canopic equipment as four jars each crowned with the head of one of the four sons of horus standing guard over the liver lungs stomach and intestines of the deceased that image is essentially a new kingdom snapshot by the time we reach the ptolemaic period canopic equipment had quietly become something else entirely and this small painted wood box excavated by george reisner s expedition at naga ed deir and now in the collections of the phoebe a hearst museum of anthropology is a good specimen for showing exactly how a ptolemaic canopic box from naga ed deir hearst museum of anthropology 6 17149ab photographed by mary harrsch naga ed deir sits on the east bank of the nile roughly 160 km north of luxor opposite girga what makes it valuable to egyptology is less any single spectacular find than its extraordinary continuity the necropolis was used almost without interruption from the predynastic period through the coptic era a span of some four thousand years phoebe hearst sponsored george reisner s excavations there across several seasons between 1901 and 1904 with fieldwork directed on the ground by arthur c mace the resulting material divided between berkeley and the museum of fine arts boston has become one of the more heavily used comparative datasets for egyptian mortuary archaeology from jars to shrine box a millennium of symbolic drift the object in question is not strictly speaking a canopic chest in the old or new kingdom sense a container built to hold four functioning jars it belongs to a much later terminal stage in the evolution of canopic equipment through the new kingdom canopic jars were genuinely hollowed vessels each assigned to a specific organ and protected by one of the four sons of horus whose differentiated heads human baboon jackal falcon appear on the lids from the 19th dynasty on the first real break comes in the third intermediate period 21st 25th dynasties when embalmers began returning the mummified viscera to the body cavity itself canopic jars didn t disappear they became dummies solid uninscribed cavity vessels retained purely as ritual markers the 26th dynasty saw a brief functional revival with genuine if empty jars reappearing sometimes divided between two half size chests flanking the mummy a practice that faded again by the end of the late period by the ptolemaic period the whole apparatus had condensed into a single object type a small tall naos form wooden chest built to resemble a shrine or sanctuary entrance standing in for what had once required four separate containers and four attendant deities this form disappears entirely by the early roman period when canopic equipment of any kind drops out of egyptian burial practice altogether our box is a clear example of that final consolidation rather than crowning four jars with four gods the entire program is compressed onto one small structure a false door shrine facade on the principal face carries the words of anubis himself split across the two long sides with the god addressed by different embalming epithets on each lord of the sacred land on one who is before the divine booth on the other while a recumbent sokar falcon perches on the lid echoing both the old falcon headed qebehsenuef convention and the broader sokar osiris funerary complex the side registers carry rows of standing genii and blue wigged human headed figures who likely stand in for the sons of horus and their four protective goddesses isis nephthys neith serqet the whole cast of characters that once occupied four independent vessels now gathered onto a single reliquary through decoration rather than through physically separate containers by the ptolemaic period canopic equipment had been evolving away from its original practical role for centuries although burial practices varied the organs were increasingly returned to the mummy after embalming the canopic assemblage therefore functioned primarily as a symbolic invocation of traditional divine protection the transformation reflects more than changing burial customs by the late and ptolemaic periods egyptian funerary religion increasingly emphasized symbolic representation over functional duplication once the embalmed organs were normally returned to the mummy there was little practical reason to maintain four separate vessels rather than abandoning the ancient tradition priests condensed it into a single shrine like object whose painted decoration invoked the four sons of horus their protective goddesses and the safeguarding powers once embodied in individual jars the box became not a cheaper replacement for canopic equipment but its accepted symbolic equivalent what we re looking at then is not a container that once held something and now doesn t it s the very last iteration of an object category whose entire late history is one of increasing abstraction from four working vessels to four empty ones to a single miniature building evoking the whole apparatus in paint and relief seen in isolation this painted wooden box might appear to be a simplified substitute for the more familiar canopic jars in reality it records a profound shift in egyptian religious practice rather than abandoning ancient traditions egyptian priests preserved their meaning while adapting their form to changing beliefs about mummification and the afterlife the result is an object that stands at the end of a tradition stretching back nearly two millennia still invoking the protection of the four sons of horus but doing so through symbolism rather than physical vessels if you enjoyed this post never miss out on future posts by following me by email posted by mary harrsch at 2 52 pm 0 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest monday june 22 2026 a remnant of sulla s sack a bronze eros the mahdia shipwreck and rome s appetite for greek cultural capital by mary harrsch 2026 among the dallas museum of art s most striking objects that i photographed there is a small bronze lamp holder depicting eros as an ephebe attributed to a greek workshop perhaps in the eastern mediterranean dating to the late 2nd or early 1st century bce depicted as a winged youth leaning dynamically forward in flight the figure once functioned as a luxury fixture its outstretched arm terminating in a bronze tendril that would have cradled an oil lamp desire quite literally provided the light eros as a lamp bearer late 2nd early 1st century bce desire providing the light this bronze figure once supported an oil lamp in an elite mediterranean household and belongs to the same workshop tradition as luxury bronzes associated with the mahdia shipwreck photographed at the dallas museum of art by mary harrsch iconography and the question of identity the museum notes that this eros is rendered with both male and female characteristics a theologically deliberate androgyny reflecting late hellenistic conceptions of desire as a force transcending gendered boundaries although writing centuries later philostratus the elder s 3rd century ce imagines describes eros in precisely these terms suggesting that the blurring of masculine and feminine traits in luxury representations of the god may already have been understood within elite 1st century bce greek cultural discourse as a sophisticated reflection of desire s inherently boundary crossing nature a closer examination of the figure raises an additional iconographic question the hairstyle tight layered curls swept back from the forehead with pronounced volume at the crown bears comparison to the krobylos the arrangement historically associated with apollo and with aristocratic athenian men in the archaic and early classical periods the boundary between apollo and eros typologies in hellenistic decorative bronze production was not always rigidly maintained and workshops frequently drew upon a shared repertoire of idealized youthful forms rather than signaling a deliberate conflation of the two deities the borrowing of apolline coiffure may have served as a subtle acknowledgment of their familial relationship within the olympian pantheon or more broadly of their participation in a common visual tradition of divine youthfulness whether the dma figure represents a deliberate conflation invoking apollo phoebus the light bringer in a piece literally designed to carry light or simply reflects the eclectic workshop practices of late hellenistic luxury production remains an open interpretive question but one the object invites seriously the classicizing gesture the figure s lean musculature serious facial expression absence of the exaggerated baroque emotionalism characteristic of pergamene or alexandrian hellenistic work is best understood in precisely this commercial and cultural context late hellenistic athenian workshops producing for roman buyers deliberately invoked classical athenian aesthetic traditions as a form of prestige signaling marketing their objects cultural pedigree to patrons who associated athens with the pinnacle of greek achievement the ephebic quality of this eros is not a dating anomaly but an ideological choice athenian craftsmanship performing its own heritage for consumption by rome s philhellenic elite eros before the cherub the dma lamp holder also captures eros at a historically specific moment in his long iconographic devolution in hesiod s theogony he is a primordial cosmological force one of the first entities to emerge from chaos by the hellenistic period he had multiplied into flocks of decorative erotes populating luxury objects across the mediterranean world roman taste would complete his transformation to the pudgy infant cupid of sarcophagi and frescos depicting mischievous erotes coaxing goat driven chariots across the walls in elite roman homes such as the house of the vettii this figure stands between those poles still muscular still serious still theologically complex but already a lamp stand in a wealthy roman dining room the cosmic force that hesiod placed at the origin of creation had become by the early 1st century bce a very beautiful very sophisticated piece of interior decoration that trajectory is itself a kind of cultural history of the ancient world in miniature the mahdia connection the museum s description notes that this bronze has been associated with a trove of greek luxury goods recovered from an ancient shipwreck near the town of mahdia off the coast of tunisia the mahdia wreck discovered by greek sponge divers in 1907 and dated to approximately 80 60 bce yielded one of the most important assemblages of hellenistic luxury goods ever recovered from the ancient mediterranean marble sculptures bronze furnishings architectural elements and decorative bronzes recovered from the site have been linked by scholars most notably günter hellenkemper salies to athenian workshops producing for roman patrons in the aftermath of sulla s sack of athens in 86 bce the dallas museum of art s eros was not part of the wreck s cargo but technical and stylistic similarities suggest that it emerged from the same broader workshop tradition the dma eros entered the art market independently and was acquired by the museum in 2005 with no documented ancient findspot its association with the mahdia finds rests on technical and stylistic correspondences that place it within the same workshop tradition though not among the shipwreck s recovered cargo even so that connection situates the piece within a specific historically identifiable moment of athenian luxury bronze production serving roman appetites for greek cultural capital that the figure survives detached from its original lamp fixture assembly is itself historically telling this condition is consistent with the broader pattern of hellenistic bronze luxury goods entering the roman market as individual pieces stripped from their original domestic contexts whether through military plunder forced sale or the deliberate disassembly of greek household assemblages for easier transport and resale the dma eros separated from the composite fixture of which it was once a functioning part embodies in its very incompleteness the extractive processes that drove the late hellenistic luxury trade if you enjoyed this post never miss out on future posts by following me by email posted by mary harrsch at 11 50 am 0 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest thursday june 18 2026 the fierce and the fine boar imagery and warrior identity on an etruscan helmet by mary harrsch 2026 for some strange reason i have always been particularly drawn to metalwork and found this beautifully decorated corinithin style etruscan helmet incised with images of boars really spectacular when i photographed it at the dallas art museum corinthian style etruscan helmet incised with images of boars bronze 5th century bce photographed at the dallas museum of art by mary harrsch further 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