Honorific Statuary in the Temples of Ptolemaic Egypt (20 min)

Presenters

Sara Cole, J. Paul Getty Museum (Getty Villa)

Abstract

The ancient Egyptians regularly displayed portrait statues in temple contexts. Such portraits could depict rulers, or they could be a type conventionally referred to as “private portraits,” meaning that their subjects were nonroyal historical individuals (typically high officials associated with the court or priesthood). These images served as a sort of surrogate, proxy, or embodiment of their subjects. A portrait statue enabled the subject to establish themselves in a permanent posture of worship within the temple, and reciprocally allowed the subject to receive the gods’ beneficence in return via the statue proxy. A secondary benefit of this practice was that the individual’s portrait could be admired by those who had access to it. Accompanying inscriptions detailed the subjects’ titles, achievements, and piety.

Following Alexander the Great’s conquest of Egypt in 332 B.C.E., and the subsequent rise of the Ptolemaic Dynasty, the Hellenistic honorific statue habit reached Egypt, where it mapped onto preexisting Egyptian statuary practices. Honorific statues in Ptolemaic Egypt were set up in several public and semipublic settings, including temples. This is largely documented in surviving inscribed statue bases and stelae, a well-known example being the Callimachos Stela, which documents honorific statues dedicated in the temple of Amun by the Theban priesthood. A category of statuary developed that represented royals or private individuals (as before), but that took on the conventions of Hellenistic honorific statuary, with inscriptions naming not only the subject but also the dedicant in a brief and formulaic manner. Egyptian-style hard stone statues continued to be produced, alongside Hellenistic-style bronze and marble. Accompanying statue bases could be inscribed in Greek, or both Greek and Egyptian. Though limited physical evidence survives, this paper will interrogate these statues’ specific meaning in the physical setting of the temple and in the broader context of Ptolemaic Egypt to argue that Egyptian temple statuary merged with the Hellenistic honorific statue habit to create a new portraiture form suited to the demands of Ptolemaic religion and political culture.

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