Cleopatra and the Crocodile: An Iconographical Problem (15 min)

Presenters

Hector Williams, University of British Columbia

Abstract

Thousands of Roman lamps produced across the empire in the first three centuries of the Common Era had relief scenes on their disks. While gladiators were among the most common there were also a variety of erotic scenes. A number of Roman lamps made in Italy in the first century C.E. have images of a slightly grotesque pudgy woman having sex with a male crocodile. The scene has been taken as a parody of Cleopatra VII although there is no particular reason except for earlier hostile Roman propaganda about her; over fifty years or more had gone by since her death. My paper focuses on one image preserved in four examples found and published at a Roman fort in northern Europe, which also appears to show the scene on a wheeled cart (like the late Bronze Age Egyptian Gurob ship cart in the Petrie Museum in London published by Shelley Wachsmann). Other versions of the subject but with no cart are also to be found (e.g., in the British Museum). The paper presents evidence that the subject might be a parody of Egyptian religion, which often focused on animal divinities (e.g., Sobek, the crocodile god). By the late republic Egyptomania had swept Rome and images appeared on works large (like the famous Praeneste Nile mosaic and Pompeian wall paintings) and small like many scenes on lamps.

NOTE: this paper contains possibly disturbing Roman images of bestiality.

  AIA-7H